cross posted from another thread: Crime is down -- and so is gun ownership July 23, 2012 By Lauter .. three important trends to keep in mind: Criminal violence in America has dropped to levels not seen in more than a generation, the percentage of Americans owning guns is down and public support for gun control measures has plummeted as well.
.. the percentage of Americans who report owning a pistol or shotgun, the weapons most often used in crime, is now down to 1 in 5, about half what it was in the 1970s. Of course, hardened criminals aren’t likely to respond to the GSS survey, so there’s probably some under-reporting going on. But that was true 30 or 40 years ago, too, and isn’t likely to have affected the overall trend.
The major point is that the American “culture of gun ownership” has been strikingly on the wane for the past generation. A similar decline has taken place in the number of Americans who hunt, now about 5% of the population. With a decline in the percentage of Americans who own guns and the percentage who hunt, one might have expected support for gun control to go up. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/23/news/la-pn-crime-is-down-and-so-is-gun-ownership-20120722
(jto wrote): Note how the percentage of firearms involved in homicides decreased from 1993 thru 2000, from approx. 71% down to 64%, about a 10% decline, statistically significant. This is the same time period that household & personal firearm ownership declined 20 -30% accd'g to GSS, gallup, & Pew.
From 2002 thru 2011 the FA% remained fairly level, avg'g about 68%, an avg decline from 1993/4 of about 5%, not that statistically significant except that, if so, one would've expected a fluctuation above the 1993/4 rate, and there wasn't any.
Percent of violence {homicide} involving a firearm, 1993–2011
1993 .. 71.2 % 1994 ...71.4
1995 ...69.0
1996 ...68.0
1997 ...68.0
1998 ...65.9
1999 ...64.1
2000 ...64.4 .. 2001 ...55.9 ... scratch, 9/11 included ~3,000
2002 ...67.1 2003 ...67.2 2004 ...67.0 2005 ...68.2 2006 ...68.9
2007 ...68.8 2008 ...68.3 2009 ...68.4 2010 ...68.1
2011c ..69.6 http://www.democraticunderground.com/1172151328
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