WASHINGTON -- Americans were robbed and victimized by gun violence at greater rates last year than the year before, even though overall violent and property crime reached a 32-year low, the Justice Department said today.
Experts said these increases buttress reports from the FBI and many mayors and police chiefs that violent crime is beginning to rise after a long decline. Bush administration officials expressed concern but stressed that it was too soon to tell if a new upward trend in violence had begun.
Last year, there were two violent gun crimes for every 1,000 individuals, compared with 1.4 in 2004, according to the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. There were 2.6 robberies for every 1,000 persons, compared with 2.1 the year before.
"This report tells us more the serious events — robbery and gun crimes — increased and the FBI already told us homicides increased," said criminal justice professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University.
"So while the report shows the more numerous but least serious violence — simple assaults, which is pushing and shoving — went down, the mix got worse in terms of severity. That wasn't a very good trade-off," Fox said.
This prompted the "grab the guns" folks to pounce, naturally:
Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University said the rise in gun violence was particularly troubling.
"A major police effort to confiscate guns helped bring down the surge in violent crime that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s," Blumstein said. "But gun distribution is easier now because we have begun to back off gun control."
A couple of things about this study.
First, from the same article:
Unlike the FBI report culled from police blotters, the statistic bureau makes estimates based on interviews with 134,000 people, so it counts not only reported crime but also crimes the police never hear about. Also, 53 percent of violent crimes and 60 percent of property crimes are never reported to the police.
Part of the data used to make up this report is based on conversations with people, not actual arrests or convictions. I don't think that's fair. In our criminal justice system we do not call someone a "criminal" until they've been tried and convicted. Given that, I don't think we should be counting "gun crimes" that haven't been through that same judicial process. It just doesn't make sense. In order for something to be a crime it has to go to court otherwise it shouldn't count.
Second, the National Academy of Sciences (with a panel formed during the Clinton administration made up of members who, all but one, favor gun control) and the CDC both did studies about the relationship between private gun ownership and gun crime trends and neither could find any relationship at all. These findings are backed up by observing the surge in gun crime in Great Britain which has very strict gun laws.
You'll be hearing a lot about this report from the gun-control zealots, but don't buy the hype. This study is crap.