Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

Pace of Decline Slows in Past Decade

by D’Vera Cohn, Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Catherine A. Gallagher, Kim Parker and Kevin T. Maass

Chapter 1: Overview

National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.
Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.
Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007. The victimization rate for other gun crimes plunged in the 1990s, then declined more slowly from 2000 to 2008. The rate appears to be higher in 2011 compared with 2008, but the increase is not statistically significant. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall also dropped in the 1990s before declining more slowly from 2000 to 2010, then ticked up in 2011.
Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.
Looking back 50 years, the U.S. gun homicide rate began rising in the 1960s, surged in the 1970s, and hit peaks in 1980 and the early 1990s. (The number of homicides peaked in the early 1990s.) The plunge in homicides after that meant that firearm homicide rates in the late 2000s were equal to those not seen since the early 1960s.¹ The sharp decline in the U.S. gun homicide rate, combined with a slower decrease in the gun suicide
rate, means that gun suicides now account for six-in-ten firearms deaths, the highest share since at least 1981.
Trends for robberies followed a similar long-term trajectory as homicides (National Research Council, 2004), hitting a peak in the early 1990s before declining.
This report examines trends in firearm homicide, non-fatal violent gun crime victimization and non-fatal violent crime victimization overall since 1993. Its findings on firearm crime are based mainly on analysis of data from two federal agencies. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using information from death certificates, are the source of rates, counts and trends for all firearm deaths, homicide and suicide, unless otherwise specified. The Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, a household survey conducted by the Census Bureau, supplies annual estimates of non-fatal crime victimization, including those where firearms are used, regardless of whether the crimes were reported to police. Where relevant, this report also quotes from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (see text box at the end of this chapter and the Methodology appendix for more discussion about data sources).
Researchers have studied the decline in firearm crime and violent crime for many years, and though there are theories to explain the decline, there is no consensus among those who study the issue as to why it happened.
There also is debate about the extent of gun ownership in the U.S., although no disagreement that the U.S. has more civilian firearms, both total and per capita, than other nations. Compared with other developed nations, the U.S. has a higher homicide rate and higher rates of gun ownership, but not higher rates for all other crimes. (See Chapter 5 for more details.)
In the months since the mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in December, the public is paying close attention to the topic of firearms; according to a recent Pew Research Center survey (Pew Research Center, April 2013) no story received more public attention from mid-March to early April than the debate over gun control. Reducing crime has moved up as a priority for the public in polling this year.
Mass shootings are a matter of great public interest and concern. They also are a relatively small share of shootings overall. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics review, homicides that claimed at least three lives accounted for less than 1% of all homicide deaths from 1980 to 2008. These homicides, most of which are shootings, increased as a share of all homicides from 0.5% in 1980 to 0.8% in 2008, according to the bureau’s data. A Congressional Research Service report, using a definition of four deaths or more, counted 547 deaths from mass shootings in the U.S. from 1983 to 2012.²
Looking at the larger topic of firearm deaths, there were 31,672 deaths from guns in the U.S. in 2010. Most (19,392) were suicides; the gun suicide rate has been higher than the gun homicide rate since at least 1981, and the gap is wider than it was in 1981.

Knowledge About Crime

Despite the attention to gun violence in recent months, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is markedly lower than it was two decades ago. A new Pew Research Center survey (March 14-17) found that 56% of Americans believe the number of crimes involving a gun is higher than it was 20 years ago; only 12% say it is lower and 26% say it stayed the same. (An additional 6% did not know or did not answer.)
Men (46%) are less likely than women (65%) to say long-term gun crime is up. Young adults, ages 18 to 29, are markedly less likely than other adults to say long-term crime is up—44% do, compared with more than half of other adults. Minority adults are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to say that long-term gun crime is up, 62% compared with 53%.
Asked about trends in the number of gun crimes “in recent years,” a plurality of 45% believe the number has gone up, 39% say it is about the same and 10% say it has gone down. (An additional 5% did not know or did not answer.) As with long-term crime, women (57%) are more likely than men (32%) to say that gun crime has increased in recent years. So are non-white adults (54%) compared with whites (41%). Adults ages 50 and older (51%) are more likely than those ages 18-49 (42%) to believe gun crime is up.

What is Behind the Crime Decline?

Researchers continue to debate the key factors behind changing crime rates, which is part of a larger discussion about the predictors of crime.³ There is consensus that demographics played some role: The outsized post-World War II baby boom, which produced a large number of people in the high-crime ages of 15 to 20 in the 1960s and 1970s, helped drive crime up in those years.
A review by the National Academy of Sciences of factors driving recent crime trends (Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 2008) cited a decline in rates in the early 1980s as the young boomers got older, then a flare-up by mid-decade in conjunction with a rising street market for crack cocaine, especially in big cities. It noted recruitment of a younger cohort of drug seller with greater willingness to use guns. By the early 1990s, crack markets withered in part because of lessened demand, and the vibrant national economy made it easier for even low-skilled young people to find jobs rather than get involved in crime.
At the same time, a rising number of people ages 30 and older were incarcerated, due in part to stricter laws, which helped restrain violence among this age group. It is less clear, researchers say, that innovative policing strategies and police crackdowns on use of guns by younger adults played a significant role in reducing crime.
Some researchers have proposed additional explanations as to why crime levels plunged so suddenly, including increased access to abortion and lessened exposure to lead. According to one hypothesis, legalization of abortion after the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision resulted in fewer unwanted births, and unwanted children have an increased risk of growing up to become criminals. Another theory links reduced crime to 1970s-era reductions in lead in gasoline; children’s exposure to lead causes brain damage that could be associated with violent behavior. The National Academy of Sciences review said it was unlikely that either played a major role, but researchers continue to explore both factors.
The plateau in national violent crime rates has raised interest in the topic of how local differences might influence crime levels and trends. Crime reductions took place across the country in the 1990s, but since 2000, patterns have varied more by metropolitan area or city.⁴
One focus of interest is that gun ownership varies widely by region and locality. The National Academy of Sciences review of possible influences on crime trends said there is good evidence of a link between firearm ownership and firearm homicide at the local level; “the causal direction of this relationship remains in dispute, however, with some researchers maintaining that firearm violence elevates rates of gun ownership, but not the reverse.”
There is substantial variation within and across regions and localities in a number of other realms, which complicates any attempt to find a single cause for national trends. Among the variations of interest to researchers are policing techniques, punishment policies, culture, economics and residential segregation.
Internationally, a decline in crime, especially property crime, has been documented in many countries since the mid-1990s. According to the authors of a 30-country study on criminal victimization (Van Dijk et al., 2007), there is no general agreement on all the reasons for this decline. They say there is a general consensus that demographic change—specifically, the shrinking proportion of adolescents across Europe—is a common factor causing decreases across Western countries. They also cite wider use of security measures in homes and businesses as a factor in reducing property crime.
But other potential explanations—such as better policing or increased imprisonment—do not apply in Europe, where policies vary widely, the report noted
Among the major findings of this Pew Research Center report:

U.S. Firearm Deaths

• In 2010, there were 3.6 gun homicides per 100,000 people, compared with 7.0 in 1993, according to CDC data.
• In 2010, CDC data counted 11,078 gun homicide deaths, compared with 18,253 in 1993.⁵
• Men and boys make up the vast majority (84% in 2010) of gun homicide victims. The firearm homicide rate also is more than five times as high for males of all ages (6.2 deaths per 100,000 people) as it is for females (1.1 deaths per 100,000 people).
• By age group, 69% of gun homicide victims in 2010 were ages 18 to 40, an age range that was 31% of the population that year. Gun homicide rates also are highest for adults ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 40.
• A disproportionate share of gun homicide victims are black (55% in 2010, compared with the 13% black share of the population). Whites were 25% of victims but 65% of the population in 2010. Hispanics were 17% of victims and 16% of the population in 2010.
• The firearm suicide rate (6.3 per 100,000 people) is higher than the firearm homicide rate and has come down less sharply. The number of gun suicide deaths (19,392 in 2010) outnumbered gun homicides, as has been true since at least 1981.

U.S. Firearm Crime Victimization

• In 2011, the NCVS estimated there were 181.5 gun crime victimizations for non-fatal violent crime (aggravated assault, robbery and sex crimes) per 100,000 Americans ages 12 and older, compared with 725.3 in 1993.
• In terms of numbers, the NCVS estimated there were about 1.5 million non-fatal gun crime victimizations in 1993 among U.S. residents ages 12 and older, compared with 467,000 in 2011.

U.S. Other Non-fatal Crime

• The victimization rate for all non-fatal violent crime among those ages 12 and older—simple and aggravated assaults, robberies and sex crimes, with or without firearms—dropped 53% from 1993 to 2000, and 49% from 2000 to 2010. It rose 17% from 2010 to 2011.
• Although not the topic of this report, the rate of property crimes—burglary, motor vehicle theft and theft—also declined from 1993 to 2011, by 61%. The rate for these types of crimes was 351.8 per 100,000 people ages 12 and older in 1993, 190.4 in 2000 and 138.7 in 2011.

Context

• The number of firearms available for sale to or possessed by U.S. civilians (about 310 million in 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service) has grown in recent years, and the 2009 per capita rate of one person per gun had roughly doubled since 1968. It is not clear, though, how many U.S. households own guns or whether that share has changed over time.
• Crime stories accounted for 17% of the total time devoted to news on local television broadcasts in 2012, compared with 29% in 2005, according to Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Crime trails only traffic and weather as the most common type of story on these newscasts.

About the Data

Findings in this report are based on two main data sources:
Data on homicides and other deaths are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on information from death certificates filed in state vital statistics offices, which includes causes of death reported by attending physicians, medical examiners and coroners. Data also include demographic information about decedents reported by funeral directors, who obtain that information from family members and other informants. Population data, used in constructing rates, come from the Census Bureau. Most statistics were obtained via the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), available from URL: www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars. Data are available beginning in 1981; suitable population data do not exist for prior years. For more details, see Appendix 4.
Estimates of crime victimization are from the National Crime Victimization Survey, a sample survey conducted for the Bureau of Justice Statistics by the Census Bureau. Although the survey began in 1973, this report uses data since 1993, the first year employing an intensive methodological redesign. The survey collects information about crimes against people and households, but not businesses. It provides estimates of victimization for the population ages 12 and older living in households and non-institutional group quarters; therefore it does not include populations such as homeless people, visiting foreign tourists and business travelers, or those living in institutions such as military barracks or mental hospitals. The survey collects information about the crimes of rape, sexual assault, personal robbery, aggravated and simple assault, household burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft. For more details, see Appendix 4.

Roadmap to the Report

The remainder of this report is organized as follows. Chapter 2 explores trends in firearm homicide and all firearm deaths, as well as patterns by gender, race and age. Chapter 3 analyzes trends in non-fatal violent gun crime victimizations, as well as patterns by gender, race and age. Chapter 4 looks at trends and subgroup patterns for non-fatal violent crime victimizations overall. Chapter 5 examines issues related to the topic of firearms: crime news, crime as a public priority, U.S. gun ownership data, and comparison of ownership and crime rates with those in other nations. Appendices 1-3 consist of detailed tables with annual data for firearm deaths, homicides and suicides, as well as non-fatal firearm and overall non-fatal violent crime victimization, for all groups and by subgroup. Appendix 4 explains the report’s methodology.

Notes on Terminology

All references to whites, blacks and others are to the non-Hispanic components of those populations. Hispanics can be of any race.
“Aggravated assault,” as defined by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is an attack or attempted attack with a weapon, regardless of whether an injury occurred, and an attack without a weapon when serious injury results.
The terms “firearm” and “gun” are used interchangeably.
“Homicides,” which come from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, are fatal injuries inflicted by another person with intent to injure or kill. Deaths due to legal intervention or operations of war are excluded. Justifiable homicide is not identified.
“Robbery,” as defined by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is a completed or attempted theft, directly from a person, of property or cash by force or threat of force, with or without a weapon, and with or without injury.
“Sex crime,” as defined by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, includes attempted rape, rape and sexual assault.
“Simple assault,” as defined by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is an attack (or attempted assault) without a weapon resulting either in no injury, minor injury (for example, bruises, black eyes, cuts, scratches or swelling) or in undetermined injury requiring less than two days of hospitalization.
“Victimization” is based on self-reporting in the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes Americans ages 12 and older. For personal crimes (which in this report include assault, robbery and sex crime), it is expressed as a rate based on the number of victimizations per 100,000 U.S. residents ages 12 and older. See the Methodology appendix for more details.

Acknowledgments

Many researchers and scholars contributed to this report. Senior writer D’Vera Cohn wrote the body of the report. Paul Taylor, senior vice president of the Pew Research Center, provided editorial guidance. Mark Hugo Lopez, senior researcher and associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, managed the report’s data analysis and wrote the report’s methodology appendix. Catherine A. Gallagher, director of the Cochrane Collaboration of the College for Policy at George Mason University, provided guidance on the report’s data analysis and comments on earlier drafts of the report. Lopez and Kim Parker, associate director of the Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project, managed the report’s development and production. Kevin T. Maass, research associate at the Cochrane Collaboration at George Mason University’s College for Policy, provided analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Research Assistants Eileen Patten and Anna Brown number-checked the report and prepared charts and tables. Patten also conducted background research on trends in crime internationally. The report was copy-edited by Marcia Kramer of Kramer Editing Services.
The report also benefited from a review by Professor Richard Felson of Pennsylvania State University. The authors also thank Andrew Kohut and Scott Keeter for their comments on an earlier draft of the report. In addition, the authors thank Kohut, Michael Dimock, Keeter and Alec Tyson, our colleagues at the Pew Research Center, for guidance on the crime knowledge public opinion survey questionnaire. Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, provided computational assistance for the report’s analysis of homicide rates by race and ethnicity.
Finally, Michael Planty and Jennifer Truman of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice provided data, invaluable guidance and advice on the report’s analysis of the National Crime Victimization Survey.

1. See Cooper and Smith, 2011. The rate declined through at least 2010. ↩
2. A USA Today analysis in 2013 found that 934 people died since 2006 in mass shootings, defined as claiming at least four victims, and that most were killed by people they knew: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/1937041/ ↩
3. Much of this section draws from Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 2008. ↩
4. The diversity of homicide trend by city was the topic of a recent forum, “Putting Homicide Rates in Their Place,” sponsored by the Urban Institute. ↩
5. There were 11,101 gun homicide deaths in 2011 and the gun homicide rate remained 3.6 per 100,000 people, according to preliminary CDC data. ↩

Chapter 2: Firearm Deaths

In 2010, there were 31,672 deaths in the U.S. from firearm injuries, mainly through suicide (19,392) and homicide (11,078), according to CDC compilation of data from death certificates.⁶ The remaining firearm deaths were attributed to accidents, shootings by police and unknown causes. The gun homicide rate in 2010 was the lowest it had been since CDC began publishing data in 1981. Other homicide data, from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (Cooper and Smith, 2011), indicate that homicide rates are as low now as they were in the 1960s.
The U.S. gun homicide rate and number of homicide victims plunged during the 1990s, but there has been little change since the end of that decade. From 1993 to 2000, the death rate dropped 45%, and the number of victims killed each year fell by nearly 7,500. From 2000 to 2010, the death rate declined 7%, and the number of victims did not change much.⁷
Still, due in part to recent increases in the number of suicides, firearm homicide accounted for 35% of firearm deaths in 2010, the lowest share since 1981, the first year for which the CDC published data.
The gun suicide rate has declined far less than the gun homicide rate since the mid-1990s; the gun suicide rate began rising in recent years, and the number of victims is slightly higher than two decades ago. See the textbox at the end of this section for more detail.
Firearms were used in 68% of homicides in 2010, according to CDC data. That share has ranged from 64% to 71% since the 1990s.⁸ In 2010, firearm homicide was the fifth leading cause of violent death, after motor vehicle deaths, unintentional poisoning such as drug overdose, falls and suicide by firearm.
Homicide by means other than firearms also has declined, though not as much as gun homicide; the non-firearm rate declined 41% from 1993 to 2010, according to CDC data.
Another way of examining firearm violence is to look at data from the CDC for firearm injuries, which comes from a survey of hospital emergency rooms. In 2011, nearly 74,000 injuries from firearms were reported in the CDC database, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Of those, about 56,000 (75%) resulted from assaults.⁹ Since 2000, the share of firearm injuries that are the result of assaults has ranged from 63% to 75%.
Deaths from mass shootings are a relatively small share of firearm homicides. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report (Congressional Research Service, 2013), 78 public mass shootings occurred in the United States from 1983 through 2012, claiming 547 lives and injuring 476 people. (The count does not include the shooters.)
The Congressional Research Service report did not assess whether mass shootings are more or less frequent than they used to be, but noted that they are relatively uncommon. It stated: “Mass shootings are rare, high-profile events, rather than broad trends that require systematic data collection to understand.”
Noting that definitions differ, the report defined “public mass shootings” as those happening in relatively public places, killing at least four people (not including the shooter) and having a “somewhat indiscriminate” choice of victims. The violence in these cases counted by CRS was “not a means to an end such as robbery or terrorism.”
A Bureau of Justice Statistics review of homicide trends from 1980 to 2008 (Cooper and Smith, 2011) found that homicides with multiple victims (in this case, three or more) have increased somewhat as a share of incidents, but are a small share of the total.¹⁰ Less than 1% of homicides each year claim three or more victims. These homicides, most of which are shootings, increased as a share of all homicides from 0.5% in 1980 to 0.8% in 2008, according to the bureau’s data.
Homicides with more than one victim were more likely to involve firearms than single-victim homicides, the review concluded. In 2008, 77% of homicides with two or more victims involved guns, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics review, compared with 66% of single-victim homicides.

Gender and Age Groups

Men (and boys) make up the vast majority (84% in 2010) of gun homicide victims.
The gun homicide rates for both genders have declined by similar amounts since the mid-1990s, though the male rate is much higher—6.2 gun homicides per 100,000 people in 2010, compared with 1.1 for females.
By age group, 69% of gun homicide victims are ages 18 to 40, a proportion that has changed little since 1993. These groups also have the highest homicide rates: In 2010, there were 10.7 gun homicides per 100,000 people ages 18 to 24, compared with 6.7 among those ages 25 to 40, the next highest rate. The lowest rates are for children younger than 12 and for adults ages 65 and older.
Rates of gun homicide fell in all age groups from 1993 to 2000, most dramatically for teenagers, and leveled off or fluctuated since then. From 1993 to 2010, the gun homicide rate declined 65% for those ages 12 to 17, the largest percentage decrease among age groups. The smallest decrease, 37%, was for people ages 25 to 40.
Younger adults are disproportionately likely to be firearms homicide victims. In 2010, young adults ages 18 to 24 were 30% of gun homicide victims in 2010, a higher likelihood than their 10% share of the population would suggest. Similarly, in 2010, people ages 25 to 40 accounted for 40% of gun homicide victims, though they were 21% of the population that year.

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Looked at by race, blacks are over-represented among gun homicide victims; blacks were 55% of shooting homicide victims in 2010, but 13% of the population. By contrast, whites are underrepresented; whites were 25% of the victims of gun homicide in 2010, but 65% of the population. For Hispanics, the 17% share of gun homicide victims was about equal to their 16% proportion of the total population.
The black homicide death rate has declined 50% since its peak in 1993, and the number of black homicide deaths fell by more than a third (37%) from 1993 to 2010. The white homicide death rate has declined by 42% over that time, and the number of white homicide deaths declined 39%. The Hispanic shooting homicide rate fell 69% from 1993 to 2000, and the number of deaths declined by 40%. From 2000 to 2010, when the overall gun homicide rate decline slowed, the Hispanic rate fell 32%, while the black and white rates declined only 4%.
The share of victims by racial or ethnic group has changed little since 1993, but the makeup of the U.S. population has altered. For example, in 1993, Hispanics were 10% of the population, blacks 12% and whites 73%. From 1993 to 2010, the Hispanic population share rose 66%, but the Hispanic share of gun homicide victims has not increased.
The larger decline in gun homicides among blacks and Hispanics, compared with whites, has had a disproportionate effect in driving down the overall gun homicide rate. If the black and Hispanic homicide rates had declined at the same rate as that of whites, the U.S. gun homicide rate would have declined by 35%, instead of 49%, from 1993 to 2010, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

Suicide by Firearm

Based on death certificates, 19,392 people killed themselves with firearms in 2010, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is the highest annual total since the CDC began publishing data in 1981, when the suicide toll was 16,139. Firearm suicide was the fourth leading cause of violent-injury death in 2010, following motor vehicle accidents, unintentional poison (including drug overdose) and falls. Firearms accounted for 51% of suicides in 2010.
The firearm suicide rate peaked in 1990, at 7.6 per 100,000 people, before declining or leveling off for most years since then. However, in recent years, the rate has risen somewhat: From 2007 to 2010, it went up 9%. The firearm suicide rate in 2010 (6.3 per 100,000 people) was the same as it was in 1998. Preliminary 2011 data show 19,766 deaths, and no change in rates from 2010.
The number of firearm suicides has been greater than the number of firearm homicides since at least 1981. But as firearm homicides have declined sharply, suicides have become a greater share of firearm deaths. In 2010, 61% of gun deaths were due to suicide, compared with about half in the mid-1990s. (The remaining firearm deaths, in addition to suicide and homicide, are accidental, of undetermined intent or the result of what the CDC terms “legal intervention,” generally a police shooting.)
Males are the vast majority of gun suicides (87% in 2010), and the suicide rate for males (11.2 deaths per 100,000 people) is more than seven times the female rate (1.5 deaths). The highest firearm suicide rate by age is among those ages 65 and older (10.6 per 100,000 people). The rate for older adults has been relatively steady in recent years; the rate is rising, though, among those ages 41-64, according to CDC data. Among the three largest racial and ethnic groups, whites have the highest suicide rate at 8.5 per 100,000, followed by blacks (2.7) and Hispanics (1.9).
Comparing homicide and suicide rates, suicide rates are higher than homicide rates for men; they are about equal for women. By age group, suicide rates are higher than homicide rates only for adults ages 41-64 and those ages 65 and older. Homicide rates are higher than suicide rates for blacks and Hispanics; for whites, the suicide rate is higher than the homicide rate. Detailed tables on gun suicide can be found in Appendix 1.

6. According to preliminary 2011 data, there were 32,163 deaths by firearms, including 11,101 homicides and 19,766 suicides. The overall rate, 10.3 per 100,000 people, was unchanged. ↩
7. According to preliminary 2011 CDC data, there was virtually no change from 2010 on these measures. ↩
8. Except for 2001, the year that terrorist attacks killed about 3,000 people, when it was 56%. ↩
9. Remaining injuries were unintentional, deliberately self-inflicted or the result of “legal intervention” by law enforcement officers. ↩
10. Data in this Bureau of Justice Statistics report come from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports, part of the Uniform Crime Reporting program. See Methodology for more details on differences between this source and the CDC data used elsewhere in this report. ↩ 

11. Chapter 3: Non-Fatal Violent Firearm Crimes

    Over the past two decades, the rate of non-fatal violent firearm crime victimizations among Americans ages 12 and older was highest in the early 1990s, and fell sharply (63%) from 1993 through 2000, according to analyses of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. From 2000 to 2011, the rate declined 33%.
    In 2009, 2010 and 2011, the rate of non-fatal firearm crime appeared to rise, compared with the prior year, but the changes are not statistically significant. In 2011, the non-fatal firearm crime rate was 75% lower than it had been in 1993.
    For non-fatal gun crimes overall, there were 725.3 victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older in 1993; in 2011, it fell to 181.5 victimizations per 100,000 people.
    Non-fatal firearm crimes are defined throughout this section as aggravated assault, robbery and sex crimes in which the victim saw a weapon. Aggravated assault and robbery are the main components of non-fatal firearm crime; there are too few sex crimes reported to analyze annual trends reliably.
    Over the 1993-2011 period, the victimization rate for aggravated assault with firearms declined 75% and the rate for robbery with firearms declined 70%.
    The rate for both gun crimes displayed the same general pattern of large declines in the 1990s. From 2000 to 2011, rates for aggravated assault declined overall. There was no clear trend for robbery with a firearm from 2000 to 2011.
    

    Gender

    As with firearm homicide, males account for most victimizations by non-fatal violent firearm crime.¹¹ However, men and boys are not as large a share of non-fatal firearm crime victims as they were two decades ago.
    Violent victimization rates involving firearms declined for both males and females from 1993 to 2011, with fluctuations in some years.
    The male victimization rate declined somewhat more than the female rate—by 79% compared with 68%—from 1993 to 2011. As a result, the share of non-fatal firearm crime victimizations involving men and boys, 66% in 1993, declined to 56% in 2011. The 2011 share of victimizations is higher than the 49% male share of the U.S. population ages 12 and older.
    Girls and women made up 51% of the U.S. population ages 12 and older in 2011 but were 44% of the victims of non-fatal violent firearm crime in that age group.
    

    Age Groups

    As with gun homicides, young adults are at higher risk than older adults of being the victim of a non-fatal gun crime.
    Two decades ago, young adults ages 18 to 24 were more likely than any other age group (among the population ages 12 and older in the victimization survey) to be a victim of non-fatal firearm crime. But the victimization rate of 18- to 24-year-olds declined 80% from 1993 to 2011, compared with the 75% overall decline in non-fatal firearm victimization during those years. By 2011, the rate for this age group was only higher than rates for adults ages 41 and older, but not statistically different from the rate for 12- to 17-year-olds or 25- to 40-year-olds.
    In both 1993 and 2011, adults ages 65 and older were less likely than other age groups to be the victim of non-fatal firearm crimes.¹² Adults ages 41 to 64 had lower victimization rates for non-fatal firearm crime in 1993 than younger age groups; in 2011, this group had lower rates than adults ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 40, but not than those ages 12 to 17.
    

    Racial and Ethnic Groups

    In 2011, the white rate of non-fatal gun crime victimization appears to be somewhat lower than those of Hispanics and blacks, although the differences are not statistically significant. (Those rates were 158.7 victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older for whites, 215.0 for Hispanics and 245.5 for blacks.)
    That is different from the pattern for gun homicide, and represents a change from 1993, when the white victimization rate (499.1 per 100,000 people ages 12 and older) was lower than those for Hispanics (1,286.8) and blacks (1,570.0) ages 12 and older.
    The non-fatal firearm crime victimization rates of Hispanic and black Americans ages 12 and older fell somewhat more sharply than the white rate from 1993 to 2011: by 83% for Hispanics and 84% for blacks, compared with 68% for whites. The Hispanic population ages 12 and older has more than doubled in size since then, so its rate is a larger factor than in the past in driving the overall rate. (The black population grew 24% in that time, and the white population grew 7%).
    All three groups showed a similar pattern of sharper declines from 1993 to 2000 than over the period from 2000 to 2011, for those ages 12 and older. However, in the period from 2008 to 2011, the non-fatal gun crime rate rose for whites (54%). After a single-year spike in 2007, the rate declined for blacks from 2008 to 2011 (44%).
    
    11. Firearms homicides are based on the total population and victimizations on the population ages 12 and older. ↩
    12. This finding should be interpreted with caution because the estimated victimization rate for adults ages 65 and older is based on a sample of fewer than 10 cases. ↩
         

    Chapter 4: All Non-Fatal Violent Crimes

    As with firearm crimes, the rate of overall non-fatal violent crime—defined as aggravated or simple assault, robbery or sex crimes (with or without a gun)—also is lower than it was in the early 1990s. From 1993 to 2011, the U.S. non-fatal violent crime victimization rate for Americans ages 12 and older declined 72%.
    There were 2,254 non-fatal violent crime victimizations per 100,000 Americans ages 12 and older in 2011, compared with 7,976 in 1993. The number of such victimizations in 2011—5.8 million—also was a decline from 16.8 million victimizations in 1993.
    The non-fatal violent crime victimization rate declined 53% from 1993 to 2000 and decreased an additional 49% from 2000 to 2010. In 2011, the rate grew by 17%.
    Looking at the main components of non-fatal violent crime, in 2011, 31% of aggravated assault victimizations involved a gun, the same share as in 1993. In 2011, 26% of robbery victimizations involved a gun, similar to the 22% share in 1993.
    By gender, males accounted for 55% of non-fatal violent crime victimizations in 2011, somewhat higher than their 49% proportion of the population ages 12 and older.
    

    Age Groups

    In terms of age, young adults have the highest victimization rates. The highest rate is among those ages 18 to 24, followed by those ages 12 to 17.
    Those ages 12 to 24 are a higher share of victims (41% in 2011) than of the population ages 12 and older (21%). Adults ages 41 and older are a lower share of victims (29%) than their share of the population ages 12 and older (53%). Those ages 25 to 40 are a slightly larger share of victims (30%) than of the population ages 12 and older (26%).
    Teens ages 12 to 17, for example, are 9% of the population ages 12 and older but were 16% of the victims of non-fatal violent crime in 2011. Adults ages 65 and older are 15% of the population ages 12 and older but were 3% of the victims of non-fatal violent crime in 2011.
    

    Racial and Ethnic Groups

    There were no statistically significant differences by racial and ethnic group in 2011 rates of non-fatal violent crime.
    Non-fatal violent crime rates declined at a similar pace from 1993 to 2010 among those ages 12 and older in the nation’s three largest racial and ethnic groups—77% for whites, 79% for Hispanics and 71% for blacks.
     
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