To: Broken_Clock who wrote (893417 ) 10/13/2015 1:10:09 PM From: combjelly Read Replies (1) | Respond to A Home Office study published in 2007 reported that gun crime in England and Wales remained a relatively rare event. Firearms (including air guns) were used in 21,521 recorded crimes. It said that injury caused during a firearm offence was rare, with fewer than 3% of offences resulting in a serious or fatal injury. [86] For 2011/12, police in England and Wales recorded 541 offences as homicide, [87] of which 42 (8%) involved the use of firearms — a rate of 0.1 illegal gun deaths per 100,000 of population. The number of homicides per year committed with firearms in England and Wales remained between 39 and 81 in the ten years to 2011/12, [88] with an average of 56 per year. During the same time period, there were three fatal shootings of police officers in England and Wales, and 154 non-fatal shootings, an average of 15.4 per year. [89] [90] The homicide rate in England and Wales at the end of the 1990s was below the EU average, but the rates in Northern Ireland and Scotland were above the EU average. [91] [92] The overall total declined progressively to 9,555 in 2011/12, with included 1,377 imitation and 3,554 air weapon offences. [93] 2011/12 saw yet a further fall to a total of 8,135, which included 1,225 imitation and 2,977 air weapon offences. [94] Only those "firearms" positively identified as being imitations or air weapons (e.g. by being recovered by the police or by being fired) are classed as such, so the actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher. [92] [95] from 2,378 in 1998/99 to 5,001 in 2005/06. Most of the rise in injuries were in the category slight injuries from the non-air weapons. "Slight" in this context means an injury that was not classified as "serious" (i.e., did not require detention in hospital, did not involve fractures, concussion, severe general shock, penetration by a bullet or multiple shot wounds). In 2005/06, 87% of such injuries were defined as "slight," which includes the use of firearms as a threat only. By 2011/12 the total number of injuries had fallen to 1,668 of which 1,434 (86%) were "slight." [94] en.wikipedia.org
