See also Firearm Deaths and Children

Columbine High School senior after witnessing her classmates getting killed April 20, 1999. Although shocking in its concentration, the 15 fatalities at Columbine were only slightly above the daily national average; 89 Americans are shot dead every day on average - that's almost 6 Columbine High School shootings a day. [See below.] Every day in the United States, 11.5 children die from firearms. [Source: National Rifle Association.]

Violence is a staggering public health problem in the United States. Although it has dropped recently, it remains several orders of magnitude higher than in other industrialized countries, and has risen significantly since World War II.

Homicide Infant Homicide

Risk Factors for Violence

Animal Models of Violence

Firearm Deaths and Children

Firearms

From 1960 to 1992, the rate of violence (assaults and homicide) has risen from 161 to 758 per 100,000 in the United States, a 371% increase. African Americans are particularly at risk; black males are 11 times more likely to be killed by gun shot wound than are whites. The United States has the #1 homicide rate of all industrialized countries:

Source: Centers for Disease Control

17% of homicide occur within the family. Males and females tend to be equally prevalent as victims of family homicides.

In the United States, the homicide rate for infants (< 1 year-old) is 9.6/100,000:

• the most dangerous day of a child's life is its first day;
• a baby has a homicide rate higher than at any point until age 17, when the rate rises to 9.6/100,000 (current statistics as of 2002, ages 15-19 y/o; source: NPR, 2/12/03).

It is becoming extremely difficult to have a dispassionate discourse on the link between access to firearms and violence in the United States. The National Rifle Association is not entirely to blame, but they have forced some disturbing - from both a scientific and Civil Rights perspective - legislation through Congress. For example, it is illegal for the Centers for Disease Control to talk about, study, or even use the term "gun control" in any of its official publications. No member of the Centers for Disease Control is allowed to attend a conference financed by those advocating gun control. Consider this:

• 32,000 people are shot dead every year in the United States* (89 a day); to put this in perspective, 58,000 Americans lost their lives in 10 years in Vietnam; this means that almost as many Americans are killed by firearms in the United States every two years as died in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam war drew millions of Americans into the streets in protest; the much deadlier gun violence epidemic has led to much public debate but virtually no legislative action. [Source: Centers for Disease Control]
• Over 4,200 children and adolescents died from firearms in 1997* (see Firearm Deaths and Children)
• 61% of these were homicides, 30% were suicides, and 7% were uninentional*.
• 20,000 Americans are paralyzed every year by firearms*; this is comparable to the polio epidemics of the 1950's.
• You are 43 times more likely to use a firearm on a family member of friend than in self-defense.*
• Nearly 1 in 4 Americans report having been threatened or shot at with a firearm. [Source: ABC News/The Washington Post poll, 5/14/2000]
• The firearm death rate was much higher among 15-24 year-olds in the United States than in any other industrialized country (all of which have more stringent gun control laws):
• Suicide is the leading cause of death among purchasers of handguns, outranking heart disease (see below).

* source: International Collaborative Effort, as quoted in the American Academy of Pediatrics News, May, 2000.

 The Australian Experience

Another table, thanks to the NRA, was used by that organization to demonstrate that a mandatory gun confiscation program in Australia led to an increase in certain types of crime. The violent crime statistics shown below were retrieved on March 27, 2000, from the Australia Bureau of Statistics website:

Another take on these numbers, however, should be the extremely low rate of violent crime, especially murder, in Australia v. the United States, a country with much more lenient gun control laws. In 1998, in all of Australia, only 284 people were murdered. Australia's 1998 population was 18,769,000 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base), so this means the murder rate in Australia was 1.51 per 100,000. The 1997 population was 18,565,000 so the 321 murders translate to a rate of 1.72 per 100,000. In other words, despite the NRA's claim to the contrary, the murder rate DROPPED by 12.2% after confiscation of the additional weapons (1.51 v. 1.72 per 100,000). And this is against a very low background murder rate. Compare this to the United States:

This means that the United States murder rate is over 51 times that of Australia or 5,000% greater!.

In an interesting study of 238,292 people who purchased handguns in California in 1991:

• the risk of suicide was 57 times as high as the rate in the general population in the first week following the purchase of the gun (644 v. 11.3 per 100,000)
• Suicide was the leading cause of death among handgun buyers, outranking heart disease.
• Even 6 years after purchasing the handguns, the owners' suicide rate was still twice that of the general population.
• 90% of those who attempt suicide with firearms succeed, v. only 10% with pills or poison.

Does having a mental disorder increase your risk of engaging in violence? The answer is yes, but not as much as one might expect. The effect of a mental disorder diagnosis (excluding substance abuse) is swamped by the effect of substance abuse, one of the greatest independent risk factors for violence, as is indicated by the following survey data:

Those psychiatric diagnoses most likely to be associated with violence include:

• *Antisocial personality disorder;
• **Alcohol dependence/ substance dependence;
• Borderline/ narcissistic personality disorder;
• Schizophrenia;
• Bipolar disorder, manic phase;
• Dementia.

Violence Risk Factors Include:

• Male gender;
• Socioeconomic status (low);
• IQ (low);
• History of abuse;
• History of past violence;
• Poor social support;
• Alcohol or substance abuse;
• Gang affiliation.

Personality factors associated with violence include decreased empathy or remorse, increased impulsivity, paranoia, and a sense of entitlement (feeling you are owed things that you have not earned).

Animal Models of Violence: Primate models of violence may offer some insight into human violence. Rhesus monkeys, who are much more aggressive as a species, if raised with Stump tail monkeys, a more peaceful species, will "learn" the less violent ways of the Stump tail and exhibit far less violent behavior than Rhesus monkeys raised within their own species. Is this a model for human reconciliation and unlearning of violence? Interestingly, crowding among these species of monkeys leads to more grooming behaviors and LESS violence, precisely the opposite effect seen among rodents. Clearly, the effects of crowding on higher order primates are complex and not as dreary as the rat models might lead us to believe.

This is probably pertinent to human beings, since 60 million years ago humans and apes split evolutionarily from the old world monkeys. Six million years ago we split from chimpanzees and bonobos. Bonobos have female dominance and use sex for reconciliation.