Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [d--a--p] at [lsid.hp.com] (Dean Payne)
Subject: Re: A quick statistic
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 23:29:55 GMT

>I offer this without comment; it's in a letter to the editor
>of the Guardian (8 july 93), from Christopher Nuttall, Director of
>Research and Statistics, Home Office. ... 

>        "In the US, 1,774 of the 275,093 robberies involving
>        guns resulted in the death of the victim compared with
>        754 of the 412,639 which did not involve firearms --
>        ie the firearm homicide rate was 3.5 times the non-
>        firearm rate.  Seventy per cent of the deaths of
>        robbery victims took place in robberies in which
>        firearms were used.

U.S. gun control efforts seem to have reduced the death/attack ratio
mostly by increasing the denominator, rather than decreasing the
numerator.  I don't consider this an improvement.

Boston's Bartley-Fox law is an example.  Gun assaults dropped a bit, but
non-gun assaults went up much more, and overall homicides didn't change.
I don't know how robbery rates changed just after New York City imposed
its Sullivan law in 1911, but the rate is now 5.5 times higher than the
rate in the rest of the nation.

Robbery rates within the U.S. vary sharply.  Gun ownership (except for
handguns) also varies significantly, but not with the same pattern.
Here are some raw figures to peruse:

=====================================

  How common is firearms ownership? [1]

  Large cities:                      31%
  Rural areas and small towns:       72%

=====================================

  Percent of Households with Firearms, by City Size (United States,
  1968) [2]
               Rural       Town        Suburbs     Large Cities
  Handguns      19          22          16          21
  Rifles        42          29          25          21
  Shotguns      53          36          26          18

=====================================

  Per-capita crime rates by population group (1991) [3]: 
                             popu-              violent
                             lation   murders   crimes    robberies
  Group    size     agencies (x1000)  per 100k  per 100k  per 100k
  Cities  1M+            8    20181    31.9      2311      1189
  Cities  500k-1M       17    11050    24.2      1379       663
  Cities  250k-500k     37    13286    20.8      1676       674
  Cities  100k-250k    125    18385    12.5      1086       386
  Cities   50k-100k    317    21808     8.1       773       251
  Cities   25k- 50k    604    21061     5.5       580       164
  Cities   10k- 25k   1440    22777     4.1       417	     93
  Cities    0 - 10k   5481    19132     3.6       377        56

  Suburban counties   1085    44224     6.1       470       121
  Rural counties      2388    25442     5.6       214        17

  Subgroups and combinations:
   Suburban areas     5344    87331     5.0       446       117
     (suburban cities plus counties minus central cities)
   All cities         8029   147679    12.7      1015       403
   All agencies      11502   217345    10.5       810       301

=====================================

[1] 'Guns in America:  Who Owns Them' from a New York Time / CBS NEWS
    Poll, run as a sidebar to 'The Gun Culture...'  New York Times,
    March 9, 1992.  "Do you or any other member of your household own a
    handgun, rifle, shotgun or any other kind of firearm?"  Based on a
    survey of 1281 adults nationwide conducted by telephone Jan. 22-25.

[2] 'A Citizens Guide to Gun Control' by Frank Zimring. 

[3] FBI Uniform Crime Reports 1991, p.192-193.


Dean Payne
[d--a--p] at [lsid.hp.com]