Each September, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publishes crime data gleaned from police departments around the country from the previous year. This year’s publication was, perhaps, more anticipated than usual, as all indications were that some areas of the U.S. saw a huge spike in murders in 2020.
Over the previous decades, the murder rate had mostly been falling, along with most violent-crime rates; this occurred as gun sales boomed, as the number of people who own AR-type rifles skyrocketed to about 20 million, as the number of people who carry concealed increased from about one million in the mid-1980s to over 20 million and as more women than ever before purchased and began carrying firearms.
It has been difficult for the mainstream media to spin the fact that even as Americans bought more and more guns, the crime rates just kept going down.
So, in a sense, they were salivating for this year’s news; except, it is difficult to spin what everyone witnessed or saw on their televisions in 2020. Uncontrolled riots seemingly condoned by the Left, a nonsensical “defund-the-police” movement, prisoner releases during the pandemic and more are clear causes of the increase in mayhem and murder.
But spin they have. Many gun-control proponents—politicians and media members—have tried to sell the narrative that law-abiding citizens’ guns are to blame for the increases. Nonsense.
Here are some highlights from the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report”:
• 2020 saw more than a 5.2% increase in violent crime, when compared to 2019.
• The estimated number of aggravated assaults rose 12.1%, and “the volume of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses increased 29.4%.”
• In 2020, as people were stuck home during the pandemic, the number of burglaries dropped 7.4% and larceny/thefts decreased 10.6%, but vehicle thefts rose 11.8%, compared to 2019 data.
• Nationally, the homicide rate rose nearly 30% in 2020, when compared to 2019.
• 2020’s statistics show that a person is more likely to be killed by someone else’s hands and feet than by any type of rifle. The UCR’s “Expanded Homicide Data, Table 8, Murder Victims by Weapon, 2016–2020” shows that in 2020, rifles of all types were reported to have been used in 454 murders. “Personal weapons,” which the FBI defines as hands, fists, feet and even pushing someone, accounted for 657 murders. Meanwhile, “knives or cutting instruments” were used in 1,732 murders, making knives and similar items more than three times more frequently employed than rifles in murders, and two times more frequently reported to have been used than shotguns (at 203 murders) and rifles combined.
