If we're going to talk numbers - most gun deaths involve gang/drug activities.
The real numbers once you remove suicide and gangs all point to mental illness and DV/Violent individuals.
That is a separate point to the first sentence. In the second sentence they also say to remove gangs which they claim in the first sentence is the leading cause of gun deaths so applying your logic doesn’t make any sense.
it's not like this changes the debate though even if it's accurate, if anything it broadens the argument. Cartel/gang grime is a huge issue and fueled by access to arms. Not only in the US, but also in Mexico and Latin America because a large supply of weapons goes illegally across the border.
In the UK, where the civilian population does not carry arms and even most cops don't, the police fires a few hundred shots per year(!) with a population of 60 million. In the entire post war era (The Troubles aside) less police has been killed than in the US in a year.
So if you care about the safety of law enforcement an arms race has bad consequences for everyone. And the militarization of police is another bad consequence.
You cant remove gangs, because half of what is called gang is a bunch of young guys living in low socioeconomic area. When then hang around together and some of them is suspect of crime, they are fairly often classified as gang. It does not take much to be classified as gang. And then, any shooting involving them is gang shooting. Similar with drug related shooting, if one of them shoots because he is jealous of girlfriend and there are drugs in his pocket, it is drug related shooting.
Gang membership as traced by law enforcement is not something super formal.
