crime statistics

[daytodaze]

The other day I was chatting with one of my buddies about guns. The conversation was all pretty cliche, and he even asked me why none of my guns were registered (Arizona has no policy on this, and a gun bought privately requires no paperwork).

Eventually, the conversation turned to gun crimes... I told him I was of the opinion that making guns illegal will not prevent gun crimes as criminals are already acustomed to breaking the law, and would therefore find a way to acquire weapons. This got me thinking about how many criminals have been arrested with weapons that were acquired through illegal means. From my perspective, there isnt much sense in getting a firearm through legal means, and potentially leaving a paper trail behind linking you to the weapon, if you're going to use it for criminal activity. My anti-gun friends seem to think that our soon-to-be felons shop at the same gun stores that i do.

I've always been a man of numbers and statistics, so does anyone have any figures on the ratio of firearms acquired illegally that are used in crimes? If not, i would be interested in working with somebody to find the data and crunch the numbers. I'm a gun guy, but I'm also a huge math nerd.

 

[daytodaze]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html

Interesting article that touches on some of my curiosities.

 

[Positivity]

The only statistic I know that has to do with legal guns and crime is how only one legal privately owned machine gun has ever been used in a crime in the U.S.

 

[GCMkc]

This has good information about the stats you're looking for: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#crime/

 

[Shadow 7D]

something like 3/5th (and no I don't have the statistics to back this up, it's been years since I read the study) were acquired through illegal means suck as theft - and remember that a street gun has a pretty long life, once illegal pretty much ALWAYS illegal, so that would include those bought and sold after the criminal acquisition.

the rest were straw bought, previously owned (and legally acquired) or taken from a family member (so kinda gray theft)

In the end,
it doesn't matter HOW a criminal gets the gun, the point is, they don't bother to follow the law (hence the fact they are criminals... I know that this logical step is lacking in MANY aniti's) and places with almost complete bans have seen an INCREASE in gun crime (UK) or it continue at levels virtually UNCHANGED (cultural thing, take Japan, where cultural differences reflect how crimes are reported, or that in Muslim countries, according to their crime stats, RAPE is a virtually non-existent crime.

SO
once again, numbers lie, and antidotes lack truth...

NOT DECREASE