2022 FBI Homicide Report

The FBI has released their annual homicide report. This year there were more agencies reporting (15,726 out of 18,888 or 83%) so then numbers are more in line with previous years. Last year the percentage reporting was ~63%.

Weapon Used	Total	Percentage
Handguns	7,937	41.3%
Firearms, Type not stated	5,706	29.7%
Knives or cutting instruments	1,630	8.5%
Other Weapons or Weapons not stated	1,327	6.9%
Personal weapons (hands/fists/feet/etc)	665	3.5%
Rifles (all types)	542	2.8%
Other Guns	422	2.2%
Blunt Objects (clubs/hammers/etc)	367	1.9%
Narcotics	187	9.7%
Shotgun	186	9.7%
Asphyxiation	98	5.1%
Fire	94	4.9%
Total	19,200	100%

Once again, Handguns top the list of weapons used in homicides for 2022. Rifles (not just so called “Assault Rifles”) were number 6 on the list – beat out by knives and personal weapons.

Of course, since more agencies are reporting for 2022 than 2021 we did see an increase in the number of homicides. However, if you extrapolate the percentage reported from the total homicides for each year, the overall total number of homicides would be nearly identical. For 2021 the total number of homicides would be 23,408 while 2022 would be slightly lower at 23,132. Of course it depends on what agencies did not report for each year.

As we continue to see calls to ban so called “assault weapons”, we must also remember that while it is very sad that 19,200 people lost their lives in 2022 to homicides, according to a CDC report on average between 300,000 and 2-million lives are saved each year through defensive use of guns.

With freedom comes risk. I will take the risk over the chance of not being able to defend myself or my family from someone who chooses not to follow the laws.

Source: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/shr