Gun homicides have dropped 39% over the last 20 years

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown that gun homicides have dropped 39% since 1993.  A second indepdent study by the Pew Research Center doing a slightly different analysis found the same thing.  They looked at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country’s population. That study found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

Both reports also found a 70% reduction of of non-fatal crimes involving guns over that period.

However, the Pew study found that 56 percent of people believe the number of gun crimes is higher than it was two decades ago. This shows how effective and pervasive the anti-gun propaganda is.  When gun homicides can go down that much, but more than half of Americans believe the rate has gone up, that's effective propaganda.

They've been going all out with that propaganda, too.  In Chicago, Michelle Obama said that kids across the nation “wake up and wonder whether they’re going to make it out of school alive” because of guns.  Charlie Rangel claimed that "millions of kids" have been killed by "assault weapons".  Using the 2011 total gun-related murder rate, it would take more than 116 years for one million people to be killed by a firearm.  They've got 2nd graders being suspended for playing with a pencil.  He was just pretending to be like his dad, who is a Marine.

California was named in 2011 by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as the state with the strongest gun control laws.  They also had the highest number of gun murders in that same year, according to the FBI.  In the same year, Texas had about half that number of gun murders.  Correlation?  The data doesn't lie. 

If you look at the data another way, namely murders per 100,000 people, another gun control city tops the list.  Washington, D.C. had the highest murder rate per 100,000 people. The nation’s capital saw 12 gun murders per 100,000 in 2011. DC also finished first in gun-related robberies per 100,000 people, with 242.56.  Correlation?  The data doesn't lie. 

A Gallup poll shows that Americans put gun control (and immigration reform) low on the priority list.  So why is the government pushing so hard for both?  It's all about control of us.