Researchers across California are concerned as aggravated assaults continue to rise, driven by what they say is an increase in crimes involving guns.
Although some kinds of violent crime — including rape and homicide — are trending down, aggravated assault numbers are up, outpacing the nationwide average, according to data from the FBI.
From 2013 to 2022, aggravated assaults using firearms in Riverside, Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties nearly doubled, with more than 14,000 crimes reported, according to the California Department of Justice.
“When we consider where the biggest increases are, it’s in instances that involve firearms and guns,” said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit think tank. “Guns are a major part of the story here, but we don’t know to what extent it’s driving that increase.”
Fully piecing together what has led to this trend will take several years, researchers say.
The pandemic is a likely culprit, according to Steve Lindley, a senior program manager at Brady, a nonprofit organization focused on gun violence prevention.
“Like a lot of states, California saw a large increase in purchases of firearms because people were frenetically scared of the end of the world,” Lindley said. “When people get scared, they arm themselves, especially in the United States.”
California Department of Justice data shows:
In 2022, 73% of homicides involved the use of a firearm, up by more than 20% since 2017.
In Southern California, aggravated assaults have increased by 22% since 2019, and the share of aggravated assaults involving firearms went up by 52% including increases in Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. In 2022, 24% of all aggravated assaults in Southern California involved the use of a gun.
From 2016 to 2021, 49% of all fatal and non-fatal gunshot injuries stemmed from assaults. The rest were the result of suicide, unintentional shootings, intentional self-harm, legal intervention or military operations, or undetermined causes.
FBI data aggregated by The Trace, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom that covers gun violence, found that gun purchases in California spiked sharply in 2020, decreased again, and then incrementally increased. In June of 2020, more than 130,000 firearms were sold across the state.
The Trace analyzed data from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is run by the FBI, with the help of a firearms sales expert. California still has some of the lowest gun ownership rates in the country.
Gun laws
Lindley explained that in California, gun-related legislation often takes several years to really make an impact. Several laws around the sale and production of ghost guns, and publicly carrying guns, have been passed in the state over the past two to three years.
“It took some time to react to that in California, but we’re still suffering the ghost gun problem, and we’ll probably be suffering for a few years until the actions by the (California) Department of Justice are put into full effect,” Lindley said.
Southern California also produced some of the most “crime guns” — guns found to be used in a crime — in the entire state. In Los Angeles County, over 140,000 crime guns were recovered. Over 50,000 crime guns were recovered in Riverside and San Bernardino counties combined.
In the city of Riverside alone, according to Riverside Police Department Chief Larry Gonzalez, the department seized around 250 guns in 2020 — and more than 800 in 2023.
“These aren’t seizures at a domestic violence arrest or a mental health hold,” Gonzalez said. “These are traffic stops.”
‘Flying blind’
Researchers are grappling with complicated circumstances around analyzing crime data.
In 2021, the FBI began transitioning its data reporting system from the Uniform Crime Reporting program to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which records data in a more in-depth and cohesive way. Many law enforcement agencies have not yet transitioned to the NIBRS system, making it nearly impossible to properly analyze crime data. Some of the largest police agencies in California, including the Los Angeles Police Department, did not report data to the FBI in 2021 or 2022.
“Part of the challenge as a researcher right now is that I can’t give good national aggravated assault data,” said Samuel Peterson, a criminal justice researcher with the RAND Center, a nonprofit nonpartisan research group. “We’re kind of flying blind right now.”
Though the FBI has had issues getting many law enforcement agencies to submit their data, researchers like Lofstrom are not concerned that this makes the data unreliable in California. It may be a larger issue in states where fewer agencies report.
According to Lofstrom, solutions are murky without more evidence. Crime data in the United States is an immensely complex web of state and federal agencies that measure and display information in many different ways. Lofstrom echoed Peterson’s thoughts on the difficulty in obtaining crime data.
“The first step in order to address this is to understand the driving factors behind the increases, and we don’t have that kind of information,” Lofstrom said. “It’s difficult to determine how to improve public safety in that regard.”
Gonzalez stressed that although law enforcement may be tempted to take harder stances, cops can’t solve gun violence on their own. For him, and other law enforcement leaders, legislation such as sentencing enhancements for using guns can be solutions.
“There is a one hundred percent deterrent, and that’s incarceration,” Gonzalez said.
Earlier this month, the United States Department of Justice announced “Operation Safe Cities,” a new initiative to crack down on gun crime in Southern California. The goal of the initiative, officials announced on March 20, is to escalate more violent crime cases involving guns to the federal justice system, using its law enforcement tools to solve and prosecute more cases.
“Defendants charged in United States District Court with violent and gun-related offenses face significant sentences in federal prison, where there is no parole,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
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