How Many Crimes Are Committed By Legal Purchasers

Someone came by searching for “most crims committed by legal purchasers.”

By that, I assume the searcher was looking for reassurance that most gun related crimes are committed by people who buy guns at a gun dealers. And that sounds like Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors have been playing at semantics again.

Except for a few guns stolen from package services and gun dealers, virtually every gun sold in the United States is legally purchased – by a law abiding citizen. Who fills out the paperwork, undergoes a criminal background check, and pays the money.

Very few guns obtained by lawful purchase are ever used in any sort of crime. Most criminologists will unhesitatingly tell you that less than six percent of all crimes “solved by arrest” or by “extraordinary means” were committed with a gun the user had legally purchased. Since there are just under 400,000 gun related crimes a year, that puts a ceiling on the total number of crimes that could be committed by a lawful gun purchaser at 24,000. We know the number is much less than that, but we do not know how much less.

The problem is the very small percentage of crimes that are solved. To illustrate that point, this graphic, taken from the 2009 Uniform Crime Report, shows the clearance rate for various categories of crime.

2009 Crime Clearance Rates

By far the overwhelming majority of gun related crimes are committed with guns that have been stolen, and traded for drugs. Those guns are passed from criminal to criminal, sold and resold, and may very well be used in hundreds of crimes before they are recovered from someone accused of a crime. Not to belabor the point, but several studies peg the percentage of stolen guns that are recovered at less than five percent; and the average time between theft and recovery at 16 years.

Given the facts, it becomes obvious that no actual count of the number of crimes committed with legally purchased guns is possible. In fact, most gun related crimes are never solved, and are certainly never linked to an individual gun, legally purchased or not.

While two out of three homicides are “solved by arrest,” that leaves one third “committed by persons unknown.” And with the provenance of their weapon unknown as well.

We do have a handle on the source of guns recovered from persons arrested and accused of a crime. These are not “crime guns,” they are guns that were in the possession of an accused person when he or she was arrested.

That point made: Of guns recovered from persons arrested and charged with a crime:

84 percent of those guns were stolen in a burglary; including 4 percent stolen from a relative or a friend.

6 percent of those guns were confiscated and resold by a “law enforcement officer.”

2 percent of those guns were stolen from the police or the military.

2 percent of those guns were stolen from a parcel or delivery service.

That leaves just six percent of guns recovered from arrestees that could properly be considered possible “crime guns” that could also have been legally purchased.

Unfortunately, we have hard data about the weapons source for just one type of gun related crime. Domestic homicides; in which the gun is almost always recovered. The FBI Uniform Crime Report does not show the incidence of domestic homicides, but the clearance rate graphic shows the clearance rate for various categories of crime.

The 2011 FBI Uniform Crime Report has an overview of 2011 murders, here.

If you click on the link, you will find there were a total of 12,664 murder victims, of which just 1752 could have been “domestic homicides.”

The link to the FBI UCR does not say what percentage of those were “domestic homicides,” but it does say there were 12,664 murder victims in 2009. So “domestic homicides” cannot represent more than 13.8 percent of the whole.
However, up to 70 percent of those murders fell into the “murdered by a partner or rival in some criminal enterprise” category. Brothers making meth who quarreled, for example. In general, most criminologists indicate the number of domestic homicides is equal to the number of wives murdered by husbands and husbands murdered by wives. 660 for 2011.

Virtually all of those of those would involve a legally purchased firearm. A gun that was almost invariably purchased for a lawful purpose, and that out of some 8600 gun related murders.

So any statement that a high percentage of crime guns were legally purchased is a canard. A lie, or if you prefer, any of the following: exaggeration, fabrication, hoax, rumor, spoof, or swindle. If the propaganda comes from a gun control group, you can bet on swindle.

Continue reading here: Bloody Baltimore, Where Strict gun laws endanger almost everyone

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