Facts on Firearms

1. In 1999, more than 28,000 Americans died by gunfire. Among all consumer products nationwide, only motor vehicles outpace guns as a cause of fatal injury. In 1999, guns outpaced motor vehicles as the number one cause of injury-related death in three states: Alaska, Maryland, and Nevada.
   
   
2. Contrary to popular perception, most homicides do not occur as the result of an attack by a stranger but stem from an argument between people who know each other and are often related. For firearm homicides in 2000, where the victim-offender relationship could be identified, more than half of the victims were either related to (eight percent), intimately acquainted with (16 percent), or knew (45 percent) their killers. Only 31 percent of homicide victims were killed by strangers. For female victims, where the victim-offender relationship was known, the majority (58 percent) were killed by their intimate acquaintances.
   
   
3. A gun is far more likely to be used in a suicide, homicide, or unintentional shooting than to kill a criminal. Using federal government figures, for every time a citizen used a firearm in 1999 in a justifiable homicide, 185 lives were ended in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.
   
   
4. In 1999, homicide was the leading cause of death among African-Americans 15 to 24 years of age�nearly nine out of 10 victims (88 percent) were shot and killed with firearms. Tallying up firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings, the overall firearms death rate among African-Americans aged 15 to 24 was nearly three times higher (50.7 per 100,000) than the rate among all Americans aged 15 to 24 (18.0 per 100,000).
   
   
5. For all our fear and fascination with guns and homicide, the fact remains that most firearm deaths in America are not the result of homicide (10,828 for 1999), but suicide (16,599 for 1999). It is estimated that only 10 percent of suicides by firearms are committed with firearms purchased specifically for the act.
   
   
6. The wholesale value of firearms manufactured in the United States in 1998 totaled more than $977 million. The value of handguns manufactured that year totaled more than $370 million, while the value of rifles and shotguns totaled over $600 million. The value of ammunition manufactured totaled more than $550 million. The combined wholesale value of both manufactured firearms and ammunition in 1998 was $1.5 billion.
   
   
7. In 1980, pistols�semiautomatic handguns�accounted for only 32 percent of the 2.3 million handguns produced in the United States. The majority were revolvers. By 1999 this ratio had reversed itself�pistols accounted for 75 percent of the 1.3 million handguns produced that year.
   
   
8. To counteract the sales slump of the 1980s, gun makers began a marketing campaign aimed at women and youth. At the same time, they began to redesign and expand their product lines focusing on firepower (assault weapons, a new generation of high-powered Saturday Night Specials, and new ammunition types), and technology (laser sights and the increased use of plastics).
   
   
9. It is estimated that in 1992 the overall cost of gunshot wounds exceeded $126 billion. The injury cost per bullet sold in the United States exceeded $25.
   
   
10. Prior to the Violent Crime Control Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) estimated that the majority of America's quarter-million gun dealers did not operate businesses such as gun stores or sporting-goods outlets, but sold guns out of their homes. An unknown number of these "kitchen-table" dealers were involved in high-volume, criminal gun trafficking. As of February 2001, due to changes contained in the 1994 law, the number of dealers has dropped to approximately 66,500.

Endnotes

1. Donna L. Hoyert, PhD, et al., "Deaths: Final Data for 1999," National Vital Statistics Report 49, no. 8 (2001): 68 and information from the WISQAR internet program, with the statistics produced by the Office of Statistics and Programming, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC.
   
   
2. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Report, 2000. Analysis performed by the Violence Policy Center.
   
   
3. Donna L. Hoyert, PhD, et al., "Deaths: Final Data for 1999," National Vital Statistics Report 49, no. 8 (2001): 68 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Report, 1999. Analysis performed by the Violence Policy Center.
   
   
4. Information from the WISQAR internet program, with the statistics produced by the Office of Statistics and Programming, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC.
   
   
5. Donna L. Hoyert, PhD, et al., "Deaths: Final Data for 1999," National Vital Statistics Report 49, no. 8 (2001): 68. Myron Boor, "Methods of Suicide and Implications for Suicide Prevention," Journal of Clinical Psychology 37, (January 1981): 70-75.
   
   
6. Excise tax data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Wholesale values calculated by the Violence Policy Center.
   
   
7. Production data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Percentages calculated by the Violence Policy Center.
   
   
8. Josh Sugarmann and Kristen Rand, Cease Fire: A Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Firearms Violence (Washington DC: Violence Policy Center, 1997), 18-23.
   
   
9. Ted R. Miller, PhD, et al., "Costs of Gunshot and Cut/Stab Wounds in the United States, with Some Canadian Comparisons," Accident Analysis and Prevention 29, no. 3 (1997): 329-341.
   
   
10. Gun dealer data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.