Firearms and Crime Statistics
From the U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics

Summary findings

Victimization

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) in 1998, 670,500 victims of serious violent crimes (rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault) stated that they faced an offender with a firearm.
Victimizations involving a firearm represented 23% of the 2.9 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault.
The FBI's Crime in the United States estimated that 65% of the 16,914 murders in 1998 were committed with firearms. For more information about weapons used in homicide see the Weapons Section of Homicide Trends in the United States

Reported Crime

Since 1993, the number of crimes committed with firearms has declined, falling to levels last experienced in the mid 1980s.

Injury

• Of the victims of nonfatal violent crime who faced an assailant armed with a firearm, 3% suffered gunshot wounds in 1997.
• An estimated 57,500 nonfatal gunshot wounds from assaults were treated in hospital emergency departments from June 1992 through May 1993.

  Arrestees and offenders

• Weapons arrestees are predominantly male, age 18 or over, and white. However, weapons arrest rates per 100,000 population are highest for teens and for blacks.
  
• Arrests of juveniles comprise an increasing proportion of weapons arrests.
• According to the 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those inmates who possessed a handgun, 9% had acquired it through theft, and 28% had acquired it through an illegal market such as a drug dealer or fence, 10% had stolen at least one gun, and 11% had sold or traded stolen guns.
  

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