Gun Myths.com

Fact: A group of National Research Council scientists concluded that this has not yet been fully demonstrated. Their research suggests that current technology for collecting and comparing images may not reliably distinguish very fine differences.¹

Fact: “Firearms that generate markings on cartridge casings can change with use and can also be readily altered by the users. They are not permanently defined like fingerprints or DNA.”²

Fact: “Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results.”³

Fact: “Because bullets are severely damaged on impact, they can only be examined manually”.⁴

Fact: “Not all firearms generate markings on cartridge casings that can be identified back to the firearm.”⁵

Fact: The same gun will produce different markings on bullets and casings, and different guns can produce similar markings.⁶ Additionally, the type of ammunition actually used in a crime could differ from the type used when the gun was originally test-fired — a difference that could lead to significant error in suggesting possible matches.⁷

Fact: The rifle used in the Martin Luther King assassination was test fired 18 times under court supervision, and the results showed that no two bullets were marked alike.⁸ “Every test bullet was different because it was going over plating created by the previous bullet.”

Fact: “The common layman seems to believe that two bullets fired from the same weapon are identical, down to the very last striation placed on them by the weapon. The trained firearms examiner knows how far that is from reality.”⁹

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: There is no such thing as an “unlicensed dealer,” except for people who buy and sell antique – curio – firearms as a hobby.

Fact: This 25-50% figure can only be achieved if you include those dealers not selling guns at these shows. These non-gun dealers include knife makers, ammunition dealers, accessories dealers, military artifact traders, clothing vendors, bumper sticker sellers, and hobbyists. In short, 50% of the vendors at shows are not selling firearms at all!

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: Adults included – This “statistic” includes “children” up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source. Most violent crime is committed by males ages 16-24, and this myth includes these young adults — many of whom are gang members who die during criminal activity¹. Incidentally, a ‘child’ is defined as a person between birth and puberty (typically 13-14 years old).

Fact: Criminals are included - 70% of these deaths are juveniles or adults, ages 17 to 20, during gang warfare. Half of the juveniles killed are involved in gang activity at the time of their deaths, which are very often drug trafficking related firefights.

Fact: Suicides and criminals included - These numbers include criminal activities and suicides.² As suicides make up more than 1⁄2 of all gun deaths, the number children killed could drop even further, to about 1.3 a day. ³

Fact: The federal government lists the total firearm related deaths for children were 612, or 1.7 per day, in 1998. 154 were suicides⁴

Fact: Over 13 teenagers die every day in automobiles, seven behind the wheel.⁵

Fact: Four children die each day in the U.S. from parental neglect and abuse.⁶

Fact: For contrast: 1,917 children die each day from malaria⁷ around the world and 15 men, women, and children per day are murdered by a convicted felon in government supervised

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: Most expert long distance shooters cannot hit a stationary target under perfect, windless conditions at such distances (one notable exception in Vietnam¹). Ill-trained terrorists shooting a high-recoil .50-caliber rifle at fast moving targets – a 600 mph airplane, for instance – have no chance.

Fact: The only known uses of .50-caliber weapons in downing aircraft have been military aircraft usingfully-automatic machine guns spraying fire while in combat against other aircraft, and as sniper fire on stationary aircraft (i.e., on the ground) on enemy airfields. Not even the military’s best sharp shooters are going to ignite a jet’s fuel tank when the jet is flying between 150-500 miles per hour.

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: According to the federal government, gun ‘buybacks’ have “no effect”.¹

Fact: “Buy backs” remove no more than 2% of the firearms within a community. And the firearms that are removed do not resemble guns used in crimes. “There has never been any effect on crime results seen”.²

Fact: Up to 62% of people trading in a firearm still have another at home, and 27% said they would or might buy another within a year.³

Fact: More than 50% of the weapons bought via a gun buy-back program were over 15 years old, whereas almost half of firearms seized from juveniles are less than three years old.⁴

Fact: According to a variety of sources, the actual effect of gun buy-back programs is to:

• Disarm future crime victims, creating new social costs.

• Give criminals an easy way to dispose of evidence.

• Cause guns to be stolen and sold to the police, creating more crime.

• Encourage people unlikely to commit crimes (elderly, women, etc.) to sell their guns.

• Encourage people to buy cheap guns and sell them to the government for a profit.

• Keep stolen guns from being returned to their rightful owners.

Fact: “They do very little good. Guns arriving at buy backs are simply not the same guns that would otherwise have been used in crime. If you look at the people who are turning in firearms, they are consistently the least crime-prone [ed: least likely to commit crimes]: older people and women.”⁵

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: Of the 2,500,000 annual self-defense cases using guns, more than 7.7% (192,500) are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.

Fact: When a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of rape attacks are completed, compared to 32% when unarmed.¹

Fact: The probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit from using a gun, but the benefits are smaller at 1.4 times more likely to receive a serious injury.²

Fact: 28.5% of women have a gun in the house.³

Fact: 41.7% of women either own or have rapid access to guns.⁴

Fact: In 1966, the city of Orlando responded to a wave of sexual assaults by offering firearms training classes to women. Rapes dropped by nearly 90% the following year.

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: You do not need a license to buy a car. You can buy as many as you want and drive them all you like on your own property without a license.

Fact: Cars are registered because they are (a) sources of tax revenue, (b) objects of fraud in some transactions, and (c) significant theft targets. Thus we ask the government to track them.

Fact: There is no constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear automobiles, and thus they are subject to greater regulation than guns.

Fact: There are more guns in the U.S. than cars (228,000,000 guns and 207,754,000 automobiles). Yet you are 31 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a car than a gun according to the National Safety Council¹ … despite cars having been registered and licensed for almost 100 years.

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info

Fact: Though the number of firearms owned by private citizens has been increasing steadily since 1970, the overall rate of homicides and suicides has not risen.¹ As the chart shows, there is no correlation between the availability of firearms and the rates of homicide and suicide in America.

Fact: Internationally speaking “There’s no clear relationship between more guns and higher levels of violence.”²

Fact: “… a detailed study of the major surveys completed in the past 20 years or more provides no evidence of any relationship between the total number of legally held firearms in society and the rate of armed crime. Nor is there a relationship between the severity of controls imposed in various countries or the mass of bureaucracy involved with many control systems with the apparent ease of access to firearms by criminals and terrorists.”³

Fact: Handgun ownership among groups normally associated with higher violent crime (young males, blacks, low income, inner city, etc.) is at or below national averages.⁴

Fact: The most significant variables to the use of guns in the commission of crimes are when parents (27.5% of inmates) abuse drugs or have friends engaged in illegal activities (32.5% with robberies and 24.3% for drug trafficking).⁵

Fact: Five out of six gun-possessing felons obtained handguns from the secondary market and by theft, and “[the] criminal handgun market is overwhelmingly dominated by informal transactions and theft as mechanisms of supply.”⁶

Fact: The majority of handguns in the possession of criminals are stolen, and not necessarily by the criminals in question.⁷

Fact: In 1968, the U.K. passed laws that reduced the number of licensed firearm owners, and thus reduced firearm availability. Their homicide rate has steady risen since then.⁸ Ironically, firearm use in crimes had doubled in the decade after the U.K. banned handguns.⁹

Fact: Most violent crimes is caused by a small minority of repeat offenders. One California study found 3.8% of a group of males born in 1956 were responsible for 55.5% of all serious felonies.¹⁰ 75-80% of murder arrestees have prior arrests for a violent( including non-fatal ) felony or burglary. On average they have about four felony arrests and one felony conviction.

Fact: Half of all murders are committed by people on “conditional release” (i.e., parole or probation).¹¹ 81% of all homicide defendants had an arrest record; 67% had a felony arrest record; 70% had a conviction record; and 54% had a felony conviction.¹²

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info