Criminals Killed 27 Cops in 2013, And 2014 Is Already Way Worse

At first glance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new statistics on line-of-duty deaths in law enforcement appear to show a dramatic decline in slayings -- criminals killed 27 cops in 2013, compared to 49 in 2012.

In 2013, guns accounted for 26 of these 27 deaths, marking a sharp drop from 2012, when guns accounted for 44 of these 49 deaths.

Of course, this data has been hastily embraced by some right-wing writers to bolster their pro-gun argument. Breitbart's AWR Hawkins, for example, tried connecting the two dots, writing: "On November 24 the FBI released stats showing the number of officers killed in the line of duty during 2013 decreased by approximately 40 percent at a time when private gun sales were breaking records."

However, statistics from The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a police advocacy group which gathers real-time data on line-of-duty deaths, tell a very different story: firearms have already killed 45 cops in 2014, according to the fund.

The fund also recorded 27 gun-related deaths in 2013, one more than the FBI. If you go by the fund's number, this is a 67 percent increase. If you were to go by the FBI's number, it would be a 73.1 percent upswing.

Also worth pointing out: though the gross number of gun-related slayings was lower in 2013 than 2012, they actually comprised a larger percentage of officer killings. In 2013, 96.3 percent of 2013 officer slayings were gun related, whereas 90 percent were gun-related in 2012.

"In 2011, for the first time in 14 years, firearms were the leading cause of death -- not car crashes," Jim Johnson, Baltimore County police chief and chair of the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence, says. "Here again, in 2014, gunfire is the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths."

The total number of cops who died on the job in 2013 and 2012 is 76 and 95, respectively. The agents who were not killed feloniously died from accidents, according to the FBI.