In 2023/24, there were approximately 58,130 possession of weapon offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, the highest number of these offences in a reporting year during this provided time period.

There were ***** firearm offences recorded in London 2023/24, compared with ***** in 2022/23. Compared with previous years, there were far fewer offences in 2020/21 and 2021/22, which may have been due to the lockdowns brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is also reflected in London's overall crime rate, which fell from ***** crimes per 1,000 people in 2019/20, to **** in 2020/21, before increasing to **** in 2021/22, and ***** in the most recent reporting year. Firearm homicides rare in the UK The United Kingdom has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, resulting in relatively low levels of gun crime and firearm homicides. In 2022/23 just *** percent of homicides in England and Wales were the result of shootings, compared with **** percent in the United States in 2021. The most common method of killing for homicides in England and Wales was by far the use of a sharp instrument at **** percent of homicides in the 2022/23 reporting year. London police budget rising In 2023/24 the budget for policing in London reached **** billion British pounds, compared with **** billion pounds in the previous financial year. This is the sixth-consecutive year of London's police budget increasing, compared with the period between 2013/14 and 2018/19, when it remained around *** billion pounds, and was actually smaller than in 2012/13 when the budget was **** billion. These budget increases have occurred alongside a recruitment drive for police officers. In 2023, there were ****** police officers in London, compared with just ****** in 2018.

In 2023/24, the police in England and Wales fatally shot two people, compared with three in the previous reporting year, and six in 2016/17. During the same reporting year, the police used firearms twice, compared with ten times in 2022/23. In general, the police in England and Wales and in the rest of the UK do not have a tradition of carrying firearms, with the country having some of the strictest gun laws in the world. In 2023/24, out of around 147,746 police officers, just 5,861 were licensed to carry firearms in England and Wales. Comparisons with the United States Among developed economies, the United States is something of an outlier when it comes to police shootings. In 2024, it is estimated that the police in the United States fatally shot 1,173 people. There are also significant disparities based on a person's ethnicity. Between 2015 and March 2024, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was 6.1 per one million people, 2.7 per million people for Hispanic Americans and 2.4 per million people for white Americans. Gun violence overall is also far more prevalent in the United States, with 42 percent of American households owning a firearm as of 2023. Gun homicides rare in England and Wales Of the 583 homicides that took place in England and Wales in 2023/24, just 22 were committed by a person using a firearm. By far the most common method of killing was using a knife or other sharp instrument, at 262 homicides, or around 46 percent of them. Compared with twenty years ago, homicides in England and Wales have declined, falling from 1,047 in 2002/03, to just 533 in 2014/15. After this point, annual homicides rose, and by 2016/17 there were more than 700 homicides recorded in England and Wales. Although there have been some fluctuations, particularly during 2020/21 at the height of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Knives or other sharp objects were involved in ** percent of homicides in England and Wales in 2023/24, the most of any method of killing. Homicides which involved hitting or kicking without a weapon made up **** percent of homicides, while shootings were identified as the method in *** percent of homicides. Overall, there were *** homicides in this reporting year, which was slightly lower than in the previous year, when there were ***, but noticeably higher than in 2014/15, when there were ***. Firearm homicides rare in England and Wales In 2023/24, there were *** knife homicides in England and Wales, compared with *** in 2021/22, which was the highest figure recently. By comparison, homicides which involved the use of a firearm were far less common, with just ** in the 2023/24 reporting year. Due to strict gun laws and low levels of ownership, the UK contrasts starkly with the United States, which has struggled with high levels of gun violence. Although some specialist police officers in England and Wales are licensed to carry firearms, the majority of police officers are unarmed. In 2023/24, for example, there were just ***** armed police, out of around ******* police officers. Overall knife crime on the rise Like many other types of crime, knife crime offences in the ***** started to decline at the start of the decade before creeping up again from 2014 onwards, reaching almost ****** in 2019/20. In London, where much of the media’s attention on knife crime is focused, there were ****** knife crime offences alone in 2019/20. Although this fell during subsequent reporting years, which were influenced by COVID-19 restrictions, it remains to be seen if the trend will continue. In 2023/24, the number of knife offences in the capital was higher than in any other year since 2019/20.

This statistic presents the leading 10 gundog dog breeds in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2023, based on the number of registrations. In 2023, the Labrador Retriever was the leading gundog dog breed, with 38,074 new registrations. Cocker Spaniels were the second most popular breed that year, receiving 26,239 registrations.

The rate of civilians killed by police in the Venezuela is far higher than in comparable developed democratic countries, with 1,830 people killed by police per 10 million residents in 2025. This compares to 69 deaths per 10 million residents in Canada, and seven in Australia - perhaps the two most comparable countries to the United States in many respects. Country with the most prisoners The El Salvador is the country with the largest number of prisoners per capita. This suggests either that they have the most criminals, or that the police make more arrests and judges hand down jail as a more frequent punishment. Costa Rica has the highest burglary rate, seeing almost three times as many break-ins as in the United States, for example. Does weapon ownership contribute to higher number of violent attacks? Other factors may also be at play. One such factor may be gun ownership. If police shootings are more likely to happen in states with a higher number of registered weapons, one could argue that the threat of violence against police makes officers more likely to utilize deadly force. However, countries like Canada also have a high number of individual firearms licenses, indicating that this factor likely does not explain the entire effect. Social factors may also influence this statistic, such as the use of the death penalty. Still, each fatal incident is complex, and the full situation surrounding each involves many factors, meaning that a simple solution is unlikely.