CCW Holders have a homicide rate 87% LESS than the general public despite VPC claim. [View All]

[Statistical]

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. The VPC knows all 3 very well. The Violence Policy Center released recently a damming report on violence by CCW holders ( http://www.vpc.org/studies/ccw2009.pdf ).

Handgun Permit holders (more commonly called CCW) killed 51 people over a 2 year period. Sure 51 people is bad but we are a country of 300 million people. Without a comparison it is difficult to see this as more than a sensationalized headline.

Here is my attempt to put this in perspective.

I concentrate on Florida. Why Florida? Florida is a "shall issue" state which means anyone meeting the requirements MUST be issued a CCW permit. Also Florida provides substantial statistics. National CCW statistics are difficult to find since permits are issued on a state basis and some states don't provide statistical data.

In the VPC report (pages 11 to 15) CCW holders in Florida killed 10 people (2 also committed suicide) that resulted in criminal charges (or shooter was dead from suicide). 10 people killed but that is 10 people over 2 years (nice way to double the number) or an average of 5 per year.

Now the Florida department of Licenses reports that there are currently 585,544 class W licenses ( http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/licensetypecount.html ). Florida issues a separate licenses for judges, retired cops, and security guards. There are actually 591,863 licenses in Florida but since none of the offenses include judges, retired cops, or security guards I will use the smaller general issue class W number.

So 5 homicides per year out of a population of 585,544. The number is actually larger than 585,544 because some persons would have a license expire and not renew during that 2 year period. Florida has about 70K licenses expire without renewal each year. Florida has also issued nearly 1.5 million permits in the last 20 years. The VPC used newpaper reports to "confirm" the license status. It is possible some of the reports were mistaken or the licenses had been revoked or expired. For the sake of argument we will use the best possible scenario (for the VPC) of 5 incidents per year out of 585,544 persons.

That works out to a rate of 0.86 per 100K residents. To put this number in perspective it is comparable to Japan (0.6) and substantially less than Canada (1.80), France (1.59), the UK (1.37) or average for Western Europe (1.5). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate For the sake of honesty I would like to point out that homicide numbers are not available for every country for every year so most recent number available was used.

The FBI reports that in 2007 (latest year available) Florida had a homicide rate of 6.6 per 100K (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_05.html) which is moderately higher than the national average of 5.6 per 100K.

We know that there were 1201 homicides in Florida and only 5 were by CCW so 1196 non-CCW homicides. The population at the time of FBI stats was 18,251,243 - 585,544 CCW holder = 17,665,699. The homicide rate in FL for non-CCW holders is 6.8

CCW holders in FL: 0.86 homicides per 100K
UK 1.37 homicides per 100K
France 1.59 homicides per 100K
Canada 1.80 homicides per 100K
US 5.6 homicides per 100K
Florida non CCW holders 6.8 homicides per 100K

So do CCW holder commit homicide? Of course. If you give a permit to 500K+ people statistically some will commit crime. Do they commit homicide at a higher rate than the general public? No, not even close. The homicide rate for CCW in Florida was 87% lower than the non-CCW population.

Another way to look at it is if the entire state had a homicide rate comparable to CCW it would be about half that of Europe and would result in 1045 less homicides per year. If the same stats applied to national average it would result in 13,920 less victims of homicide.

CCW Holders are no danger to society. The only ones who think so are those who want the bar to be set at 0 (a simply unacceptable standard as homicide occurs even where guns are banned). Nobody is saying CCW holders NEVER commit violent crime but rather they are commit crime at a substantially lower rate comparable to rate by law enforcement.

The majority of crime is committed by repeated offenders and related to the drug trade (the business side not casual use side). Focusing on CCW holders as a "threat" despite being substantially more law abiding than the general population is a canard. Sensationalizing 25 homicides per year out of a population of 3 to 10 million CCW holders nationally (which is about 50% to 85% lower than the national homicide rate) shows how weak VPC position has become.