Fast Firearm Facts
Something that has been frustrating for me in the past is not being able to find an information resource that I had found months prior. The goal of the Fast Firearm Facts page here on JustPews is to provide you with useful, cited, information that you can use during your firearm related debates.
If you happen to notice a link is dead, or have a fact that we don’t have listed below, be sure to shoot us an email at info@justpews.com. If you’re sending us a fact, please supply the accompanying support so we can verify it quickly.
.01
Firearms are used defensively between 500,000 and 3,000,000 times annually per a Center of Disease Control study. While the number gets disputed, DGUs (defensive gun uses) at least match the amount of times they are used in commission of a crime. According to Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, the number is somewhere between 60,000 and 2,500,000 times annually.
The CDC has stated that these variations exist due to different factors such as populations studied, what questions are asked, and more.
.02
Preventable Gun Deaths, specifically, have gone down from 824 in 1999 to only 486 in 2019 despite several factors that suggest otherwise. A couple of these factors being the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and there being more guns than ever in public hands.
.03
All rifles combined (including hunting rifles, semi-automatic rifles, fully automatic rifles, etc.) account for fewer homicides annually than knives, blunt objects (like baseball bats), or “personal weapons” (hands). This has been the case from 2014 to 2018. Additionally, all rifle & all shotgun related homicides don’t even total the same amount of homicides committed by knives per year.
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.04
The common belief is, is that firearm ownership increases the likelihood of suicide by firearm… while this is a weird argument, preliminary data for 2020 suggests otherwise. Every month of 2020 saw record shattering firearm sales, however, the CDC’s data so far suggests that suicides declined by 5.4% despite there being over 6,000,000 new gun owners.
.05
A law enforcement background doesn’t equate to the individual being competent with firearms. It also doesn’t mean that they have received adequate training to provide opinions on firearms. Law Enforcement on average have ≥ 30% accuracy rating. Training wise, law enforcement officers, on average, only train two times a year for less than 15 hours.
To reinforce the training aspect, I asked Robert Butler from Kenaz Tactical Group what his average student spread is throughout the year. He gave a rough approximation that his student pool is 85% civilian, 10% military, and 5% law enforcement.
Police 1 (accuracy) | CNN | Police 1 (training) | Kenaz Tactical Group
.06
You are more likely to get injured via a stairway accident than you are a firearm related accident. In a 23 year study, it was found that individuals are injured by stairway related accidents over 1,000,000 times a year on average. In contrast, there are only about 100,000-150,000 firearm related injuries per year. The interesting thing with the firearm related injuries number is that it doesn’t differentiate injuries from non-fatal attacks.