How Much Do Those Who Carry Guns in the US Reduce Their Risk of Being Victims of Violent Crime?
Executive Summary
- Those who carry guns usually do so to reduce their risk of violent crime.
- How well does this behavior achieve this goal?
Introduction
Those who carry guns do so primarily for self-defense. However, we have never seen an article that performs and estimates how much carrying a gun protects a person from violent crime. In this article, we will evaluate this risk reduction.
Our References
See our references for this article and related articles at this link.
The Estimates of the Number of Violent Crimes Deterred by Those That Carry Guns
Let us review several studies that estimate how many people use guns to deter violent crime.
DOJ study reported 83,000 annual defensive gun uses from 1987-1992. During same period, there were more than 135,000 total gun deaths and injuries in the U.S. annually. What is also interesting is that the study notes that “In most cases victims who used firearms to defend themselves or their property were confronted by offenders who were either unarmed or armed with weapons other than firearms.”
Specifically, only 35% of those who used a firearm in self-defense actually faced an offender who had a gun. DOJ makes no judgments in this study on whether the level of force employed by these individuals was appropriate or consonant with the threat they faced. – The Virgina Center for Public Safety
So, let us review the different estimates together.
- National Crime Victimization Survey (in 1995): 65,000 per year.
- DOJ: 83,000 annual defensive gun uses from 1987-1992 – This averages to 83,000 / 5 = 16,600 per year.
That is quite a range. 65,000/16,600 = 3.9. So the range is 4x. As important as this topic is, there are few estimates from studies.
Let us use the higher figure of 65,000k per year, but that survey was conducted back in 1995, and as we will be using modern population figures, we will need to increase this number to adjust for the population growth in the US.
In 1995, the US population was 266 million. Today, the US population is 332 million. 332/266 = 1.24. 1.24 * 65,000 = 80,600. So we will use this number of 80,600.
How Many People Carry Firearms in the US?
Harvard estimates that 3 million people a day carry a gun daily in the US.
The next step is to reduce the number of violent crimes potentially averted by gun carrying. This means that the number of estimated defensive gun uses, 80,600 per year, must be compared against the number of people days a gun is carried. This is done by dividing 80,600/3,000,000 = .026 or 2.6%.
This means that a person who carries a gun daily reduces their risk of violent crime by 2.6%.
This means the National Crime Victimization Survey (1995) is too high.
A Second Estimate Using the DOJ Estimate
Let us repeat this calculation, but this time using the DOJ’s estimate of 16,600 per year.
First, we need to increase the value to match the current population. But the year of the study is 1992, not 1995. So, the US population was 256 million. Today, the US population is 332 million. 332/256 = 1.29. 1.29 * 16,600 = 21,414.
So, we will now use this number of 21,414.
The next step is to take again the number of violent crimes that are potentially averted from this gun carrying. This means that the number of estimated defensive gun uses 21,414 per year must be compared against the number of people days a gun is carried. This is done by dividing 21,414/3,000,000 = .007 or .7%.
This means that a person who carries a gun daily reduces their risk of violent crime by .7%.
That is a small reduction, but it would mean carrying a gun every day to attain this reduction.
However, it is also possible that while the 80,600 figure is too high, the 21,414 estimate (of defensive gun use) is too low.
Furthermore, there are other incidents where people protect themselves from violence by having a gun in the home, but that is rare. But the more these defensive gun uses occur at home, the more that detracts from the numbers of defensive gun use allocated to those who carry guns as the statistics need to balance out.
Carrying a Gun Versus Staying Out of Higher Violent Crime Areas
Carrying a gun is not the only way to reduce one’s likelihood of being a victim of violent crime.
Here are a few other easy ways.
Strategy #1: Stay Out of High Crime Areas
In the US, around 1/2 of the violent crime is produced by just 13 percent of the population, which is blacks, as I cover in the article Is Gun Culture or Black Culture to Blame for Gun Violence?
The Concentration of Gun Violence in the Black Population
Why is it so easy to predict a state's gun violence rate from the percentage of the population that is black?
The following table should make it obvious.
The reason is that gun violence is highly concentrated in the black population. This generalizes to other areas of the world. Unsurprisingly, the highly black Caribbean has very high levels of violence.
The next most violent group is Latinos. One can reduce one’s risk of violent crime alone very significantly by simply staying away from black and Latino areas of cities. This risk reduction is enormously less than the 7% to 2.7% reduction calculated up to this point.
Strategy #2: Use A Non Lethal Weapon
There are a large number of non-lethal weapons. One of these is an airgun pistol.
Therefore, self-defense is not an either-or decision, with one side carrying a gun and the other not having a weapon. As violent crime is highly concentrated in non-white and non-Asian areas, one’s location has a powerful effect on one’s incidence of violent crime.
Looking At the Big Picture
No matter how many guns a person carries or how often they carry them, their risk reduction is a rounding error compared to the actual causes of death, which are shown below. These are global figures, so they are not specific to the US. However, global deaths tend to be similar around the world.
Notice that the percentage of overall mortality that is caused by homicides is .7%. That is not 7% that is .7 percent. Seven percent is .07. Point seven percent is .007.
Let us combine the estimated reduction in deaths through carrying a gun and adopt the higher number, which is 2.7%. 2.7% x 415,000 (if everyone al around the world carried a gun all the time) = 11,500 people’s lives saved. However, if everyone made a very minor adjustment to their diet, it would be child’s play to reduce the mortality from heart disease by 1%. 1% x 18,500,000 = 185,000 people. There is simply no way for people around the world to carry guns to make death by homicide a logical area of focus to reduce mortality. One’s ability to impact this form of mortality is always limited to how common this type of mortality is.
The Dominance of Blacks in the Violence Statistics in the US
Why Other Races Flee Black Areas
Whites and other races flee from blacks for very good reasons. In the US blacks are the number one racial group that victimizes other racial groups with violent crime. Black culture is harmful to both blacks and anyone else who is around blacks. Blacks themselves know this. However, they don't usually admit it to other races and prefer to blame everything else but themselves. For blacks to effectively race scam -- they have to hold the position that blacks behave the same and deserve the same outcomes as other races.
All Races Are the Same?
This is a part of the root of the problem. This proposal that all races are the same had no evidence to support it, yet it was asserted because it was politically correct. It was an appealing lie to believe because it "felt good."
Once this idea took hold, it now became a platform to say that all races should have the same things, and this has primarily been interpreted as non-whites invading white spaces and countries and taking their society from them.
Blacks want white outcomes, but because they can't produce white outcomes on their own, they have to invade white societies to obtain them, and their tool is not producing these things themselves but by taking them through living in white-originated societies.
The Repeating Pattern Seen Everywhere Blacks Exist
When blacks move into a neighborhood, that area becomes undesirable. Shoplifting increases, violence increases, and sexual assault increases. This leads to stores closing and a downward spiral for that area. The higher the percentage of the population that is black, the more predominant this and many other negative behaviors become as they begin to behave in conformance with black culture and expectations rather than conforming.
What Would Happen if the US Had No Blacks?
Blacks are a massive civilization threat to any country, society, or city that accepts them. All countries, except white countries, have figured out not to have blacks live in their borders.
Here is some food for thought: “What if all the Blacks suddenly left America, which is 13.3% of the total U.S. population?” and these statistics would improve.
- Amount of people in poverty would drop - 34%
- The prison population would go down - - 37%
- Welfare recipients would go down by - - - 42%
- Gang members would go down by - - - - - 53%
- Chlamydia cases would go down by - - - - - 54%
- Homelessness would go down - - - - - - - - 57%
- Syphilis would go down - - - - - - - - - - - - 58%
- AIDs & HIV would go down - - - - - - - - - - 65%
- Gonorrhea would go down - - - - - - - - - - 69%
- Average ACT scores would go up - - - - - - 5.5 points
- Average IQ would go up - - - - - - - - - - - - 7.4 points, (this is how much only 13% of the population in drags down IQ scores) This would put the U.S. 3rd in the world tied with Japan
- Average SAT scores would go up almost - - - 100 points
- The average income for Americans would go up over $20,000 a year
Blacks are major users of subsidies from the rest of the taxpaying population. This burden (some of which used to help blacks reproduce more blacks) would be lifted from the rest of the population
The effect on cities would be profound. All of the predominantly black cities from Detroit to East St Louis to Baltimore to Atlantic City, Wilmington Deleware -- every city would experience an immediate and radical improvement.
Blacks as a Civilizational Threat
Blacks are a civilizational threat to any area, any city, and they seek to infiltrate white cities and countries because they have no ability to create functional societies, as I cover in the article What Happens When Blacks Take Over Management of Cities and Countries from Whites? Therefore, blacks need to infiltrate a society or city that is already built up by another group -- with the inevitable outcome that the area is ruined when a sufficient number of blacks are present.
Conclusion
Calculating the risk reduction of carrying a gun is not a simple matter. This is because one relies on estimates rather than known numbers, and the estimated number of people who use guns defensively has a large range.
But what this analysis indicated is that the National Crime Victimization Survey must have overestimated the use of guns to stop violent crime.