Okay so I am doing my obligatory daily check-in on my facebook account today and among the pics of friends kids and the fabulous lives that all our friends are leading, i find a pro-gun post by a former co-worker that boldly claims: GUN HOMICIDE IS DOWN 49% IN THE LAST 12 YEARS. ONLY 12% OF AMERICANS KNOW THAT. TELL US AGAIN HOW UNBIASED OUR MEDIA IS.
I thought to myself, how could that possibly be, given the rash of mass killings we've had the last decade. So I decided to do a little research on that claim. It turns out somebody beat me to it.
More after the orange barricade
It didn't take me long in my internet search to find an aritcle by politifact on this very claim that is circulating facebook.http://www.politifact.com/...
Politifact checked the last 12 years of gun homicides compiled by the CDC and found they decreased by 6% while the rate of gun homicides is down 16% , both of those numbers are well short of the 49% quoted in the viral facebook post...so where did this study come from. Well politifact found the answer :
the 49% decline emerged from a 2013 pew research report. It found that gun homicides ( or specifically, the rate of gun homicides per 100,000 residents), had declined by 49% between their peek in 1993 and 2010, a period of 17 years. We double checked Pew's calculations of the CDC figures and found that they were correct. Between 1993 and 2010, the gun homicide rate fell from 7.02 per 100,000 to 3.59 pere 100,000 or a decline of precisley 49%.
So does that mean the viral facebook meme is right? Well hold your horses there my gun toting partner, it turns out the time mistake between 12 years and 17 years is a very significant one..again politifact :
...by making this mistake, the meme misunderstands the overall trend lines of gun homicides. Gun homicides didn't decline 49% of the last 12 years--rather they declined precipitously over six years in the 90's, then have remained basically stagnant over the last decade or so. Why is that so important? Because the decline, to some degree, has to do with a specific reason----the end of the crack epidemic.
So actually the big decline happened before the 12 years that the viral facebook meme starts counting as politifact notes:
"this seemingly minor mistake betrays a significant misunderstanding of how the homicide rate has fluctuated over the past tow decades. The meme is not just incorrect, it's a distraction from what actually happened. We rate the claim false"
So I guess bottom line , less crack heads are killing each other. Now it is just down to the normal people killing each other and various family members and school children. Whew, I feel so much better. Now I can go back to facebook and look at all the wonderful lives everyone is leading....