Violent Crime May Be Down, but the Use of Firearms Is Up

Violent crime has decreased over the last decade, but criminals are increasingly more likely to be armed with guns, the Justice Department reported Saturday.

Offenses committed with firearms rose from 9.2% of crimes in 1979 to 12.7% in 1992, according to the department’s national crime victimization survey.

Americans experience an average of 6.7 million violent crimes--rapes, robberies and assaults--each year. The annual number of violent crimes involving firearms averaged about 858,000 from 1987 to 1992, said the report, which was released by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The FBI reported 16,000 firearm murders in 1992, and the number of all violent crimes with firearms reported to the FBI grew 55% from 1987 to 1992, from 365,709 to 565,575, the report said.

Data for the report was collected from national surveys of households and prisons and from information that the FBI receives from more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide.

From 1987 to 1992, victims faced armed offenders in 5.1 million violent incidents and in 85,453 murders and non-negligent homicides. In just under 1 million of these incidents, 880,000 people were injured and 85,000 were killed.

A survey of state prison inmates revealed that 16% were carrying firearms while committing the crime that put them behind bars, the report said. Half said they fired the weapon during the crime.

Twenty-three percent of state prisoners who used guns in their crimes and had previous records bought their weapons from retail stores, the study said.

More than 50% of prison inmates who obtained guns illegally said they did so to avoid background checks or waiting periods.

The report also said 91% of the 415 law enforcement officers murdered from 1987 to 1992 were killed with firearms.