(iStock.com)
(iStock.com)

Many Americans believe it is common for police force officers to fire their guns. About three-in-10 adults estimate that police fire their weapons a few times a year while on duty, and more eight-in-ten (83%) approximate that the typical officeholder has fired his or her service weapon at least once in their careers, exterior of firearms training or on a gun range, according to a recent Pew Enquiry Centre national survey.

In fact, simply about a quarter (27%) of all officers say they take ever fired their service weapon while on the chore, according to a separate Pew Inquiry Center survey conducted by the National Police Research Platform. The survey was conducted May nineteen-Aug. xiv, 2016, amid a nationally representative sample of 7,917 sworn officers working in 54 police and sheriff'due south departments with 100 or more officers.

Merely amongst police officers, are some more than probable than others to have fired their weapon in the line of duty?

Overall, those who accept fired a weapon on duty and those who haven't are broadly similar in terms of their personal traits, the types of communities they serve and even their attitudes nearly crime-fighting. Simply an analysis of the survey results finds some minor but intriguing differences.

To commencement, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more than probable than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and not-veterans to have always fired their service weapon while on duty. Each human relationship is significant subsequently controlling for other factors that could exist associated with firing a service weapon.

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, an analysis of officers' views on a range of police force enforcement issues finds that having fired a service weapon bears a minor only consistent relationship to several key attitudes. For example, while solid majorities of those who have and have not fired their weapon favor protecting gun rights over controlling gun buying, officers who accept fired their weapon are somewhat more than probable to favor protecting gun rights than those who have non used their firearm. In fact, across a number of gun-related questions, officers who accept fired their weapon while on duty are less likely to favor some measures that would restrict gun ownership or provide more than government oversight over gun sales.

Officers who have fired their weapon differ from their colleagues on other issues besides. For example, they are somewhat more likely to approve of harsh, physical methods for dealing with some people than their colleagues who have not discharged their gun (49% vs 42%). They also are somewhat more likely to say that the country has made the changes needed to assure equal rights for blacks than to believe more changes are needed (85% amongst those who have fired their service weapon vs. 79% among officers who have not). Again, the relationship between these attitudes and whether or not an officer has fired his or her service weapon is statistically significant even later decision-making for other factors in the analysis.

Before examining these and other results in more than detail, two of import cautions must be raised. Kickoff, the fact that an officer has fired their service weapon while on duty should not be interpreted to mean that the officer shot someone. (The question asked: "Other than on a gun range or while training, accept you ever discharged your service firearm while on duty, or have you not done this?") Nor were officers asked how many times they have fired their service weapon in their careers or whether they currently work for the aforementioned agency where they fired their service weapons. The report is a snapshot of officers who are employed currently, and information technology describes their past experiences.

2nd, information technology is important to bear in mind that the factors that are associated with firing a duty weapon cannot necessarily be said to have acquired officers to discharge their gun. For example, while the study shows that officers working in larger communities are more likely than those in smaller communities to accept fired their weapon sometime in their police enforcement careers, the data don't permit i to say that working in a large metropolis or county is the reason – or even a reason – why officers are unduly probable to take fired their guns. Other factors common to both gun use while on duty and working in a large city may be the existent cause. (For more, meet "Nigh this analysis" beneath.)

Male officers, whites more likely to have fired weapon

Not all demographic characteristics are equally good predictors of gun apply. Gender is one of the best, this analysis finds. Male officers are more than than twice equally likely as female person officers to take fired their weapon (30% vs. 11%). This relationship remains significant fifty-fifty after accounting for gender differences in job assignment, length of service, race, age, the size of the metropolis and department they work for, and other factors.

White officers also are more than probable than officers who are racial or ethnic minorities to accept fired their weapon (31% vs. 21%). Veteran status also differentiates those who take discharged their weapons from those who have non. Veterans make up 28% of all law officers, the survey finds, and among this group, about three-in-ten (32%) have fired their gun, compared with 26% of those who accept not served in the military machine.

Differences by city characteristics

The population size of the surface area where the officer works also is associated with the probability that an officer will have fired his or her weapon while on duty. While 23% of officers in communities with fewer than 400,000 residents have discharged their gun, 30% of officers in areas with populations of 400,000 or more say they have done so. (Equally a bespeak of reference, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Minneapolis, Minnesota each accept about 400,000 residents, though police departments in these cities were not among those in the sample.)

It's possible, of grade, that this relationship is non well-nigh the size of the customs simply about the level of violence that may be present in bigger cities. To test this theory, we combined our survey data with fierce criminal offence rates from 2015 – the near recent yr available – in each of the 54 areas nosotros studied.

The resulting analysis finds that the violent criminal offense charge per unit in the city or county where an officer works has a mixed affect on the likelihood that an officer has fired his or her service weapon. Officers who currently work in cities with comparatively depression criminal offence rates are significantly more than likely to have fired their weapon than police force in cities that autumn in the middle. (Violent offense is defined equally murder, rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault; the information used in this analysis were reported by individual constabulary agencies to the FBI.)

Nigh one-in-v officers (22%) in areas with at least six and but fewer than 10 violent crimes per ane,000 residents in 2015 have e'er fired their service weapon. By contrast, about a tertiary (32%) of officers who work in areas with a lower trigger-happy crime charge per unit have discharged their gun. In areas where the tearing crime rate is 10 or more, 28% of officers have fired their weapon. Withal, that proportion is non significantly different from the share that works in communities with fewer than half-dozen or six to fewer than 10 vehement crimes per 1,000 residents.

Officers' attitudes and gun use on the job

Do officers who take e'er fired their weapon differ in terms of their attitudes from those who take non? To answer this question, we compared the views of the two groups of officers across a range of questions.

The analysis finds that officers who have fired their weapon are more than supportive of gun rights than those who have not. About eight-in-10 officers who accept fired their service weapon (82%) say protecting the right of Americans to ain a gun is more important than controlling gun ownership. Past dissimilarity, about seven-in-10 (71%) of those who take not discharged their firearm while on duty share this view.

Officers who accept fired their weapon are also less likely than their colleagues to back up restrictive gun measures, even after controlling for other factors that may be related to these attitudes. For case, most a quarter (23%) of officers who have fired their gun support a ban on set on-style weapons, compared with 35% of other officers. About one-half (52%) of those who have shot their weapon favor creating a federal database to track gun sales, a move supported past roughly two-thirds (65%) of other officers.

Officers who take fired their weapon likewise are more likely than those who have not to hold that "some people tin simply exist brought to reason the hard, physical style" (49% vs. 42%).

Finally, the analysis finds a modest difference between the two groups of officers in terms of their views of racial progress. The survey finds that 85% of officers who have fired their service weapon while on duty say the country has made the necessary changes to give blacks equal rights with whites, a view shared by 79% of officers who accept non fired their weapon.

Most this analysis

Findings reported in the graphics and text of this analysis reflect unproblematic 2-fashion relationships. In other words, the findings on gender reflect the percent of men and women officers who have ever fired their weapon. Each of these findings was farther subjected to more rigorous analysis using a statistical technique known as logistic regression. This technique estimates the independent event of each characteristic, holding the other factors in the assay constant.

The fourteen factors controlled for in the logistic analysis were the officer'south gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, years in law enforcement, current consignment and rank, veteran status, size of the officeholder's department, whether the officer's agency was a police or sheriff'due south section, whether the department was located in an urban or suburban area, the census region where the officer's department was located, the size of the population served by the officer's department and the urban center or county's vehement crime rate in 2015. Unless otherwise noted, simply those relationships that were statistically significant after decision-making for these factors are reported.

Rich Morin is a sometime senior editor focusing on social and demographic trends at Pew Research Middle.

Andrew Mercer is a senior inquiry methodologist at Pew Research Center.