While gun homicides are outnumbered two to one by gun suicides, it is important to look at the tragedies of murders in the inner cities. In this article I am just reporting on murders in LA County, but plan to add other articles on other areas. Whereas the CDC was banned for 17 years in collecting and analyzing data for public health related to guns, the FBI has been gathering such data, as well as states, counties, and cities. The source here is the LA Times homicide project.
While I have not been studying inner cities, commonly known factors associated with inner city crime are poverty, gangs, territorial disputes, drug trafficking, large school dropout rates, lack of preschool, teenage pregnancies, high unemployment, broken households, working parents, high cost of housing outside of area, little commercial or industrial development in the area, poor public transportation, and little or no career prospects. Clearly, it is not just gun laws that are necessary here, but a large and sustained commitment to educational, social and economic projects to cure these areas.
For perspective of the data below, in 2011, California had 1,220 firearm murders, which was 68% or 2/3 of the total murders.
In the six years from 2007 through 2012, in LA County there were 3,288 gunshot murders. This averages out to 548 a year. There were 1,045 murders by other means, of which 450 by stabbing was the largest component. This gives a total of 4,333. So guns were responsible for 76% of the murders in LA County. The rate has not been declining, since there were 555 homicides in 2012.
The victims of murders by all means over the six years were: Latino, 2,202; Black, 1,395; White, 527; Asian, 137; and Other, 42. Clearly, no one is immune from this.
Broken down by age by year, almost all the ages from 17 to 31 had greater than 100 murders for each age.
