Gun Control Laws and Enforcement Trends 2023

[ammodotcom]

Report Highlights

• The amount of State gun laws nearly doubled between 1991 and 2016 (Source).
• The first Federal gun control law was passed in the 1934 National Firearms Act, which limited civilians’ access to machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled shotguns, and others (Source).
• Between 1886 and 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted the Second Amendment to include the right of the individual to keep and bear arms six times.
• Homicides (all methods) increased 27% from 1968 to 2021.
• Homicide rates increased 28% while incarceration rates fell 15% during the 2020 pandemic.
• The 1994 Crime Bill authorized $12.5 Billion dollars for law enforcement, while the ATF receives $1.5 billion annually to enforce Federal firearm laws.
• The ATF seized more than 360,000 firearms in 2021 (Source).

The Enforcement of Laws vs. The Passing of New Laws

Timeline of Federal Firearm Laws in the U.S.

• 1934 National Firearms Act
• 1938 Federal Firearms Act
• 1968 Gun Control Act
• 1986 Firearm Owner’s Protection Act
• 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act
• 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act
• 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act
• 1994 Public Safety & Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act
• 2022 Protecting Our Kids Act

Supreme Court Cases Involving Individual’s Rights to Bear Arms

• 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford - Determined Slaves do not have 2A rights.
• 1875 US v. Cruikshank - The right of the individual to keep and bear arms.
• 1886 Presser v. Illinois - States can ban individuals from forming militias.
• 1939 US v. Miller - Courts ruled the Federal Government can regulate firearms not effective for militias (i.e. short-barreled shotguns).
• 1980 Lewis v. United States - Upheld that felons cannot keep and bear arms.
• 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller - Determined that an individual does not have to be a part of the militia to keep and bear arms.
• 2010 McDonald v. City of Chicago - Determined that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment also applies to the Second Amendment.
• 2016 Caetano v. Massachusetts - Determined that the 2nd Amendment applies to firearms that did not exist in 1791.
• 2020 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of Bruen - Ruled that states must maintain a “Shall-Issue” stance of concealed carry outside of the home.

Economic Costs of Enforcing Gun Laws

• ATF - 2022 - $1.5 Billion
• NICS - 2022 - $8.4 Billion
• Criminal Justice System - 2022 - $12.62 Billion
*Compared to $2.8 Billion in medical costs yearly.

ATF Conviction Stats

• 34,436 Cases Initiated
• 10,138 Recommended for prosecution
• 6,315 Prosecuted
• 5,338 Convicted
*The Federal Government prosecutes 15% of all cases initiated.

Gun Laws & Prosecution Trends

Firearm Laws & National Homicide Trends

Homicides in the U.S. are now 27% higher than before the 1968 Gun Control Act (per capita). They declined by nearly 20% after the 1994 Crime Bill and remained low until 2015. Homicide rates sharply increased in 2019.

Incarceration Trends & Homicide

Sources

• Incarceration Trends
• Firearm Homicide Trends
• BJS Incarceration Trends
• 2022 Incarceration Data
• Impact of the 1994 AWB
• BJS Firearm Homicide Trends
• 1990-Present Homicide Data
• BJS Incarceration Trends
• FBI NICS Budget
• Gun Violence Research Budget
• Federal Firearm Prosecution Trends
• BJS 2020 Incarceration Stats
• 18 U.S. Code § 922
• 18 U.S. Code § 924
• 26 U.S. Code § 5861

Gun Control Laws and Enforcement Trends 2023 originally appeared on Ammo.com

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

I think the thing is that today when a person gets arrested they have many charges levied against them. If a prosecutor wants to incarcerate that person all they need to do is pick any one, portion of, or all of the charges.

In 2023 a good DA/prosector could convict a Trump Sandwich.

 

[pmbug]

It's really too bad that there is no viable way to track/report on the number of incidents where a gun owner successfully defended themselves from assault or worse using a firearm (whether by brandishing or firing). It would be amazing to see that kind of statistic reported along side the various death statistics that are always presented in gun control arguments.

A suggestion for your stat page that might be viable/possible is to show the number of licenses for concealed carry permits issued by the various states by year as well as the percent of those permit holders that were convicted of using a firearm in a crime (homicide/armed robbery/etc.) by year. It would really highlight that there are law abiding, responsible gun owners out there.

 

[pmbug]

Also, I'd suggest adding the Institute for Justice to your list of pro-freedom groups. They do amazing work:

https://ij.org/

 

[Occam's Banana]

It's really too bad that there is no viable way to track/report on the number of incidents where a gun owner successfully defended themselves from assault or worse using a firearm (whether by brandishing or firing). It would be amazing to see that kind of statistic reported along side the various death statistics that are always presented in gun control arguments.

One source for such information is John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center.

All the items quoted below from other threads are based on data collected & analyzed by CPRC.

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From THREAD: Guns Save Lives - Reports of citizens using guns to stop crime

h/t Thomas Massie: UPDATED: Compiling Cases where concealed handgun permit holders have stopped likely mass public shootings

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1530613864970190852

From THREAD: From 2014 to 2021 how many mass shooters were stopped by an armed citizen?

FBI undercounts armed citizens stopping attacks
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...i-undercounts-armed-citizens-stopping-attacks
by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist | October 04, 2022 02:12 PM

The FBI has been vastly undercounting the times a mass shooting or active shooting event has been stopped by legally armed citizens, according to an independent report provided to Secrets.

In the new report, some undercounting has been “by an order of more than 10,” suggesting that the so-called “good guy with a gun” event is not rare and may be involved in a third or more of the attacks.

“An analysis by my organization identified a total of 360 active shooter incidents during that period and found that an armed citizen stopped 124,” said John R. Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

“There were another 24 cases that we didn’t include where armed civilians stopped armed attacks, but the suspect didn’t fire his gun. Those cases are excluded from our calculations, though it could be argued that a civilian also stopped what likely could have been an active shooting event,” he added.

In looking over FBI cases between 2014-2021, he found that some 34% were stopped by armed citizens, not the 4% cited by the FBI and often used by the media to dismiss the importance of legally armed citizens.

Lott did not assign any blame for the difference, instead citing how some shootings are counted in the FBI’s reporting.

“Two factors explain this discrepancy – one, misclassified shootings; and two, overlooked incidents. Regarding the former, the CPRC determined that the FBI reports had misclassified five shootings: In two incidents, the bureau notes in its detailed write-up that citizens possessing valid firearms permits confronted the shooters and caused them to flee the scene. However, the FBI did not list these cases as being stopped by armed citizens because police later apprehended the attackers. In two other incidents, the FBI misidentified armed civilians as armed security personnel. Finally, the FBI failed to mention citizen engagement in one incident,” said the report.

Lott found that when he adjusted and corrected the numbers, the percentage of shootings stopped by a legal gun owner jumped from single digits to 34%-49%.

He also argued that gun-free zones were a hindrance to good data and defenses that, if eliminated, would boost the percentage of shootings stopped.

“Between 2014 and 2021, citizens stopped 104 out of 204 potential or actual mass shootings where we could identify that guns were allowed in the area. So 51% of attacks were stopped by people legally carrying concealed handguns. Again, the most recent data is most accurate, and for 2021, 58% of the attacks were stopped in areas where people were clearly allowed to carry,” said Lott.

“The numbers indicate if we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks,” he added in the report.

From THREAD: FBI Data on Active Shootings Is Misleading

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1697250400536289564

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FBI Data on Active Shootings Is Misleading
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...on_active_shootings_is_misleading_149699.html
John R. Lott Jr. (31 August 2023)

Americans are constantly debating policing and gun control. But to discuss these issues, we have to depend on government crime data. Unfortunately, politics has infected the data handling of agencies such as the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control.

Last year, the CDC became the center of controversy when it removed its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website at the request of gun control organizations. For nearly a decade the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report showing that the annual number of people using guns to stop crime ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million.

Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive, wrote to CDC officials after a meeting last year that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.” The CDC’s estimates were subsequently taken down and now lists no numbers.

The FBI is also susceptible to political pressure. Up until January of 2021, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I showed the bureau that many cases were missing and that others had been misidentified. Yet, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher.

The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn’t hit.

To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don’t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents.

It isn’t surprising that people will miss cases or occasionally misidentify them when using news stories, but the FBI was unwilling to fix its errors when I pointed them out. My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an updated list. Back in 2015, I published a list of missed cases in a criminology publication.

Unfortunately, the news media unquestioningly reports the FBI numbers. After 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken used his legally-carried concealed handgun to stop what would have been a mass public shooting, an Associated Press headline noted: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander.” A Washington Post headline proclaimed: “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting.”

The CPRC’s numbers tell a different story: Out of 440 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2022, an armed citizen stopped 157. We also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard.

We found these cases on a budget of just a few thousand dollars. Though we found that armed citizens had stopped eight times as many cases as the FBI claims, I make no assertion that we unearthed all of these stories. It is quite possible that the news media itself never covers many such incidents.

While the FBI claims that just 4.6% of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, the percentage that I found was 35.7%. I am more confident that we have identified a higher share of recent cases, and our figure for 2022 was even higher – 41.3%.

The FBI doesn’t differentiate between law-abiding citizens stopping attacks where guns are banned and where they are allowed, but you can’t expect law-abiding citizens to stop attacks where it is illegal to carry guns. In places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings that were stopped is 51%. For 2022, that figure is a remarkable 63.5%.

In order to follow the FBI’s definition, we excluded 27 cases because a law-abiding person with a gun stopped the attacker before he was able to get off a shot.

In an email I received in 2015, a bureau official acknowledged that “the FBI did not come across this incident during its research in 2015, but it does meet the FBI’s active-shooter definition.” The official noted they will miss active-shooter cases because the reports “are limited in scope.” Yet, the FBI database never added the incident.

When the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler reached out to the FBI for comments on our earlier work up through 2021, they emailed: “We have no additional information to provide other than what is provided within the active shooter reports on our website.”

However, a researcher at Texas State University did respond to two of the cases we had identified in our earlier work. He argued that one case involving a shooting at a dentist office was excluded because it involved a domestic dispute and another at a strip club because it was a “retaliation murder.” We list 14 examples where the FBI list includes shooting resulting from domestic disputes and three others where a shooting started after someone was denied entry to a lounge or bar. So why the double standard? Domestic disputes and “retaliation murders” are only included when they don’t involve permit holders stopping the attacks.

The FBI data on active shootings is missing so many defensive gun uses that it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional. Errors can happen, but the failure to fix past reports shows a troubling disregard for the truth. The reality is that armed, law-abiding citizens are unsung guardian angels.

https://twitter.com/RealSpikeCohen/status/1699185869112951183
[source of text graphic: https://thereload.com/emails-cdc-re...cates-pressured-officials-in-private-meeting/

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CDC Funding Decisions Based Largely on Politics, Not Science
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a..._largely_on_politics_not_science_148631.html#
by John R. Lott Jr. | 21 December 2022

For the second year in a row, the Centers for Disease Control has been caught ignoring science and letting liberal interest groups set its policies.

In 2021, the American Pediatric Academy and the Children’s Hospital Association tracked COVID-19 statistics in children and the data show no relationship between mask mandates and the rate at which children caught the disease. In the face of this evidence – and other data showing that masks harm children’s development, the CDC supported masking students after being pressured by the National Education Association (the nation’s largest teachers’ union).

Now comes word that CDC is again allowing partisan politics to influence its policies. This time, gun control activists got the CDC to remove research from its website. Yet, the CDC is trusted to impartially dole out millions of dollars for public health research on firearms: From 2020 to 2022, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) each spent about $50 million on such research.

Until May of this year, the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) report showing that the annual number of defensive gun uses ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million. But now, the CDC has removed from its website all of those numbers and even the link to the NAS report.

Following introductions from the White House and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, gun control advocates linked up with the CDC. They had a private meeting and numerous email exchanges, in which they lobbied hard to have the CDC remove the information.

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), wrote to CDC officials after their meeting. “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU [Defensive Gun Use] discussions.” He was upset that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.”

The Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that there are between 64,000 and 120,000 instances each year in which a firearm is used defensively. This is on the low end of all the other social science on this subject. Some 20 such surveys have been conducted. Three of them show about 800,000 defensive gun uses a year. All the other estimates are over 1 million, with one as high as 3.5 million. The average estimate is about 2 million. William English of Georgetown University surveyed 16,708 gun owners just last year, and estimated that there are 1.67 million such uses annually.

The National Crime Victimization Survey’s low numbers result from its choice of a screening question. It first asks a person if they have been a victim of a crime. Only respondents who answer “yes” are then asked if they have used a gun defensively. Yet, people who successfully brandish a gun generally do not view themselves as having been victimized.

Devin Hughes, who runs another gun control group, GVPedia, argued in a July 6, 2021 email to the CDC that it should use the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) estimate of defensive gun uses. Hughes claimed that the GVA is “the most widely accepted compendium of gun violence data.” Between January and mid-December this year, the GVA claims that there were only 1,112 defensive gun uses in the United States.

Last year, RealClearInvestigations examined Gun Violence Archive’s data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10 and found 774 defensive gun uses. Ninety-five percent of these self-defense cases were from initial news reports. I checked those cases against other lists compiled by the Heritage Foundation and the Crime Prevention Research Center, and found that the GVA had missed an additional 30 cases. But that wasn’t the important problem.

What makes defensive gun uses newsworthy doesn’t accurately reflect the real world. In GVA’s statistics, 43% of the GVA’s gun violence cases involve fatalities, 42% involve woundings, and 10% are cases in which shots were fired defensively that don’t hit anyone. Less than 4% of cases involved no shots fired, and more than half of those involve the criminal being held at gunpoint until the police arrive. But as gun control experts know, these kinds of cases represent a tiny fraction of the instances in which firearms are used defensively for self-protection.

First of all, relying on the news media is not an accurate way to gather crime data. Criminologists know that less than one-quarter of violent crimes are reported to police. Nor does the news media even cover most violent crimes reported to police. Second, and much more significantly, about 95% of defensive gun uses involve brandishing a weapon.

Bryant defends the reliance on media accounts, and discounts the argument that the media disproportionately covers the most violent cases. “I don’t think it is a newsworthy issue … too many media really like the feel-good stories of homeowner standing up to home invader,” Bryant wrote me last year. “Even better if it was a granny doing it. They don’t just go with the ‘if it bleeds …’ newsworthiness.”

This is a naïve view of how newsrooms operate. Suppose an editor is presented with two stories, one with a dead body on the ground and another where no one was hurt because the would-be victim brandished a gun and the criminal ran away. And in the later story you can’t even be sure what crime would have been committed. Which story would you run in your hometown newspaper paper?

But even that isn’t really the point. When a law-abiding citizen scares off a would-be criminal by brandishing a legal firearm, journalists don’t typically wrestle with its newsworthiness for the simple reason that such cases are reported to neither the police nor the press. That’s why rigorous social science studies are necessary – the precise kind the CDC is censoring to benefit special interests.

Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have earmarked the $100 million in research funding for public health researchers who are far to the left on gun control compared to criminologists or economists.

The CDC keeps making decisions based on politics, not science. It has shown that it is not able to divorce political views from decisions about who to fund. But, as researchers know all too well, the CDC isn’t unique. The government just can’t keep politics out of funding decisions.

 

[ammodotcom]

In 2023 a good DA/prosector could convict a Trump Sandwich.

They wouldn't have to be good at their job. They'd just need to work in a blue state.