Hot Topics: The Second Amendment and Gun Control

The rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 persons age 12 or older declined 41% across the 26-year period of 1993 to 2018, from 8.4 to 5.0 homicides per 100,000 (figure 1). During the more recent 5 years from 2014 to 2018, this rate was between 4.0 and 5.2 homicides per 100,000 persons age 12 or older. A total of 150 persons age 11 or younger were victims of firearm homicide in 2018, resulting in a rate of 0.3 homicides per 100,000 persons in this age group (not shown).

About 16.8 million applications for firearm transfers and permits were subject to background checks under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act) in 2018 (figure 1). About 230,000 (1.4%) of these applications were denied. (See table 1.) From the time that the Brady Act went into effect in 1994 to 2018, more than 250 million applications were subject to background checks and nearly 3.8 million applications (1.5%) were denied.

The Firearm Inquiry Statistics (FIST) program collects information on firearm applications and denials and combines this information with the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) transaction data to produce an estimated number of background checks for firearm transfers or permits since the effective date of the Brady Act in 1994. Reports describe trends in background check activities and the number of firearm transaction applications processed by the FBI and by state and local agencies, the number of applications denied, reasons for denial, and estimates of applications by jurisdiction and by each type of approval system.

The BJS National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the nation's primary source of information on criminal victimization. Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 persons in about 150,000 households.

Since 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in the United States, resulting in 1536 people shot and killed and 983 people shot and wounded.

Explore the shooters, their backgrounds, guns and motivations.

You can explore a few of our key findings from compiling this data

A firearm injury is a gunshot wound or penetrating injury from a weapon that uses a powder charge to fire a projectile. Weapons that use a power charge include handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Injuries from air- and gas-powered guns, BB guns, and pellet guns are not considered firearm injuries as these types of guns do not use a powder charge to fire a projectile.

Gun violence and crime incidents are collected/validated from 7,500 sources daily – Incident Reports and their source data are found at the gunviolencearchive.org website.