National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. …
Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007. …
Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. [cont.]
Pew