U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Firearm Injury and Death
from Crime, 1993-97
October 2000, NCJ 182993
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This file is text only without graphics and many of the tables.
A Zip archive of the tables in this report in spreadsheet format
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http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/fidc9397.htm---------------------------------------------------------------
By Marianne W. Zawitz
and Kevin J. Strom
BJS Statisticians
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Highlights
* Of serious nonfatal violent victimizations, 28% were committed
with a firearm, 4% were committed with a firearm and resulted in
injury, and less than 1% resulted in gunshot wounds.
* Of all nonfatal firearm-related injuries treated in emergency
departments, 62% were known to have resulted from an assault. For
firearm-related fatalities, 44% were homicides.
* The number of gunshot wounds from assaults treated in hospital
emergency departments fell from 64,100 in 1993 to 39,400 in 1997,
a 39% decline. Homicides committed with a firearm fell from 18,300
in 1993 to 13,300 in 1997, a 27% decline.
* Four out of five of the victims of both fatal and nonfatal
gunshot wounds from crime were male.
* Almost half of the victims of both fatal and nonfatal gunshot
wounds from crime were black males. About a quarter were black
males ages 15 to 24.
* Over half the victims of nonfatal gunshot wounds from crime
were younger than 25. Older victims were more frequent in the
homicide statistics.
* Over half of the victims of nonfatal firearm injury from crime
who went to an emergency room were subsequently hospitalized
overnight.
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Firearm injuries from crime include those caused by interpersonal
violence regardless of whether the injured party was the intended
target or even a perpetrator. Such injuries can be fatal (homicides)
or nonfatal (assaults). Incidents resulting in firearm injury may
involve other crimes like robbery and burglary but are referred to
as assaults. While injuries other than gunshot wounds can result
from crimes involving a firearm, this report focuses on gunshot
wounds.
No single source of data completely measures firearm injury and
deaths from crime. Several sources cover only fatalities while
others cover nonfatal injury. For example, the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) does not include data about victims
who died. In addition, while the NCVS provides a wealth of
information about crime and victims, it does not capture enough
cases involving gunshot wounds to provide annual estimates of many
of the characteristics of such events. Hospital emergency department
surveillance systems are able to collect additional cases and
details about victims of nonfatal gunshot wounds but do not collect
information about victims who do not seek treatment in hospitals
(about 20% of all victims of nonfatal gunshot wounds, according
to the NCVS).
To describe firearm injury and death from crime, this report uses
data from victim surveys, hospital emergency departments, death
certificates, and law enforcement reports on homicides. (See the
box on page 5 and the Methodology for additional discussion
of sources of data concerning firearm injury.)
How much crime involves firearms
and gunshot wounds?
The BJS National Crime Victimization
Survey (NCVS) data for 1993-97 show
that of the 19.2 million incidents of
nonfatal violent crime, excluding simple
assault --
* 28% were committed with a firearm
* 4% were committed with a firearm and resulted in injury
* less than 1% resulted in gunshot wounds.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, 30% of the murders,
robberies, and aggravated assaults reported to police from 1993
to 1997 involved firearms. Of these violent crimes, 1% were murders.
Of all murders from 1993 to 1997, 69% were committed with firearms.
How many people are injured by
firearms and how many of these
injuries are the result of crime?
According to the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey
conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
0.4% of all injury visits to hospital emergency departments from
1992 to 1995 were caused by firearms (4 of every 1,000
visits.)***Footnote 1: C.W. Burt and L.A. Fingerhut. "Injury
visits to hospital emergency department: United States, 1992-95,"
National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Health Statistics,
13:131,1998.*** This estimate includes all causes of firearm
injury and may include visits for patients seeking follow-up care
and patients who died at the hospital.
Estimates from the CDC Firearm Injury Surveillance Study show that
from 1993 through 1997, about 412,000 nonfatal firearm-related
injuries were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments.
Firearm injury
from all causes
1993-97 Total 411,800
1993 104,200
1994 89,600
1995 84,200
1996 69,600
1997 64,200
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