Guns and Proportion-
Data on Violence From 2019

I want to put violence in perspective. Let’s start with a common set of facts before we argue about their significance. I saw an infographic about firearms from 2013 and I wanted to update it. 2019 is the last year where I could find complete data from both the US Department of Justice and the US Center for Disease Control. I want to put those facts into perspective so we see the real picture. This is what I found:

-We had 39,707 deaths from firearms in 2019. Over 61 percent were suicides. (24,380)

-That means firearms were used in 15 thousand homicides, a death where one person kills another. Murder doesn’t happen everywhere with equal frequency. More than half of the murders are concentrated into 2 percent of our counties. In contrast, more than half of our counties won’t have a murder at all. I find it interesting that many of these non-violent counties are typically considered to have high rates of gun ownership.

-We have laws against it, but criminals commit over a million violent crimes each year. We have over 23 thousand firearms regulations, but criminals used a gun to commit murder over 12 thousand times a year.

-Across the entire United States, that leaves us with all of 3,065 homicides with a gun that were not gang related. For perspective, that is about the same number of people who died from asthma or obesity.

-Of those 3 thousand deaths, 340 homicides were the justified use of lethal force by a police officer. 344 homicides were attributed to civilian gun owners using a gun in legally justified self-defense. .....