'Automatic weapons' in UCR data

[HCM]

Just a thought past my bedtime, so no research or real analysis:

With many departments SWAT and other units have rifles with "group therapy" settings. Some of them also actually shoot and kill people. I wonder how many of those homicides were "justified" or "excusable" upon classification....

I would not blink twice at hearing that statistic if terms were a little more fleshed out, and included line of duty stuff. Also, automatic may follow the "capable of..." definition, rather than "giggle switch was set on full instead of semi..." Any insights @HCM?

I also would not doubt wrong boxes being checked by clerical folks, as one of our clerical folks just messed up pretty big with a simple paperwork routing error, causing th local courts to scold the department via letterhead.

pat

As Tom Givens has said so well UCR data is voluntary - not all agencies submit data and the quality of the data varies wildly.

Garbage in/Garbage out.

Politics often plays a role. Agencies under reporting the severity of crimes to make their stats look better. The wish.com Glock plates have caused a real increase in illegal full autos on the streets but I also would not be surprised to see politics driving sone agencies to misreport “automatic weapons” to support a gun control narrative.

Automatic weapons does not necessarily mean NFA registered legal automatic weapons. In addition to the wish.com Glock plates there has been an increase in 3D printed auto Sears (aka “wall hangers”) among sone extremist groups.

The shooter from the Oakland federal court house shooting who subsequently ambushed Santa Cruz Sherriff deputies this year used a suppressed 80% 9mm AR which, if I am remembering correctly, was also full auto.

[BehindBlueI's]

I wonder how many of those homicides were "justified" or "excusable" upon classification....

NIBRS does include justifieds under "homicide offenses", but they break them out here so we can see the total numbers (table 15 is non-LE if anyone is interested):

LE justifiables:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s...a-table-14.xls

32 LE rifle uses for the year in question and you raise an interesting point. The rifle I used was a DRMO rifle and was legally a machinegun despite being pinned to semi-auto. I suppose since it was "designed" to be automatic it would be "automatic" for NIBRS purposes regardless of current configuration.

So that might also be playing into the higher numbers but still seems to leave a lot on the table that may just be error.

[revolvergeek]

I saw a link to the 2019 weapon type data:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/nibrs/2019/table...olved_2019.pdf

I hadn't seen the 'automatic' breakout before. I was surprised that e.g. 45 of the 216 rifle murders were with automatic rifles - my first thought was that they might have an odd definition of automatic, but it look like they are using the normal one (see the page numbered as 93):

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/...93020.pdf/view

Maybe old news, but I hadn't seen that before.

This is actually what I do for a living. We CONSTANTLY try to get agencies to understand that just because it is colloquially called an 'automatic' doesn't mean that it actually is 'automatic'.

[shane45]

Im thinking its conflating automatic and autoloading. As in 45 automatic colt pistol. The rifle that autoloads must be an automatic too!