Unfortunately, the information on the suspects is much less complete than it is for victims as Baltimore solves relatively few murders through arrest. With only 31 percent of murders result in an arrest, the most difficult cases for the police to solve involve gangs. Thus the 81% of suspects having a criminal record should be viewed as a severe underestimate.
The problem is yeah it nothing new that it can be assumed that most murders are done by criminals. Still there is a significant number of unsolved cases and thus no verifiable proof who did it. Also crime statistics in one city in the US does not say anything about the rest of the US. It is just assumptions based on incomplete data. Yet we know that all murders are not done by criminals. Some are done by people who have no criminal record. You can't ignore that as innocent people going to school, concerts, clubs, etc are murdered by people who may have no criminal record. If life matters, then we cannot belittle this just to find grounds for justification of one's pro gun political view.
Yeah.....and you are just wrong....
The Criminology of Firearms
In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some empirical research of its own about guns. The Academy could not identify any gun restriction that had reduced violent crime, suicide or gun accidents.
Why don't gun bans work? Because they rely on voluntary compliance by gun-using criminals. Prohibitionists never see this absurdity because they deceive themselves into thinking that, as Katherine Christoffel has said: "[M]ost shootings are not committed by felons or mentally ill people, but are acts of passion that are committed using a handgun that is owned for home protection."
Christoffel, et al., are utterly wrong. The whole corpus of criminological research dating back to the 1890'sshows murderers "almost uniformly have a long history of involvement in criminal behavior," and that "[v]irtually all" murderers and other gun criminals have prior felony records — generally long ones.
While only 15 percent of Americans have criminal records, roughly 90 percent of adult murderers have prior adult records — exclusive of their often extensive juvenile records — with crime careers of six or more adult years including four major felonies. Gerald D. Robin, writing for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences,notes that, unlike ordinary gun owners, "the average murderer turns out to be no less hardened a criminal than the average robber or burglar."
The same organization in 2004 also put out this
Data on Firearms and Violence Too Weak to Settle Policy Debates; Comprehensive Research Effort Needed
-- There is no credible evidence that "right-to-carry" laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime. To date, 34 states have enacted these laws.
-- There is almost no evidence that violence-prevention programs intended to steer children away from guns have had any effects on their behavior, knowledge, or attitudes regarding firearms. More than 80 such programs exist.
-- Research has found associations between gun availability and suicide with guns, but it does not show whether such associations reveal genuine patterns of cause and effect.
Well what is the rest of the story . Using your article it also mentions
-- There is no credible evidence that "right-to-carry" laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime. To date, 34 states have enacted these laws.
My only point is people die from gun violence and it not just from criminals. It from people who snap for some reason.
Shooting of Haynie family: Four members of a family were killed and one was injured after a teenager allegedly fired at his family as they returned home.
2019 New Orleans shooting: Ten people were shot in a densely populated area with heavy police presence at a time when tens of thousands of tourists were downtown for the
Bayou Classic football game.
2019 Fresno shooting: Ten people were shot, four fatally, at a football watch party.
2019 West Texas shooting: Seven people were killed and twenty five others were injured on the
Interstate 20.
2018 Tallahassee attack: A man entered a yoga studio and killed two women and injured five others; four by gunshots and one by
pistol-whipping, before committing suicide
2017 Las Vegas shooting: A man in a high floor of a hotel opened fire on a country music festival happening outside, killing 58 people and injuring 851 others, with 422 of them suffering from gunshot wounds.
I can go on but my point would be people are dying and not just from criminals.
You say " normal people aren't committing crime or murdering people.... "
well I would agree someone who does this is not normal. But they are
all not criminals until they pull that trigger. Nor do they
all have a prior criminal record. There are no clear answers but it clear something has to be done as it is violence that people end up dead. Some of the perpetrators do not have prior criminal records.
The guy who did the las vegas shooting did not have a record and was a business owner. He had money and no one knows why he did what he did. How can someone like that be stopped. Do 58 people enjoying a concert have to die because the focus has to be on criminals. Over 400 people are scared for life. Criminals are part of the problem but there is another side to the problem that also needs to be address. It should not be ignored simply because people want to keep their guns mentality.
crimeresearch.org
