One thing the article didn't mention which I'm curious about is the role of urban geography on shooting lethality.
For example, Chicago's lethality rate is almost half of New Orleans (16.3% vs 27.9%). Having been to both cities, I've noticed that Chicago has remarkably long city blocks (1/8th mile per block iirc), with wide sidewalks and numerous alleyways, and a very straight and regular grid in most of the South and West side sprawl. New Orleans trends towards the opposite (though it's also much more varied than Chicago), with narrow sidewalks, lots of narrow one way streets, and irregular grid layouts. It's easy to see how New Orlean's geography could favor the attacker and lead to higher lethality. Would be interesting to see these geographic features quantified in some way.
One statistic I would like to see is the % of homicides that are solved. So many urban killings end up becoming cold cases because of the lack of witnesses.
I recall reading this NPR article that says about 2/3 of homicides are resolved. In fact, since you specified 'urban' killings, those trend higher than rural killings.
The NRA and NRA-backed politicians tend to fight even researching gun deaths, let alone trying to do anything about them. If you know that, then any gap in our knowledge about gun violence stops being surprising.
I haven't seen any evidence that the NRA has fought research. They have taken a stand against the CDC advocating for gun-control policies, not performing gun-violence research. The CDC has simply refused to do this research since being banned from advocating for specific policy. The CDC is not banned from performing gun-violence research, and has even conducted such research at the specific behest of Obama. The conclusions of this research actually largely vindicated a lot of the points made by the pro-gun community.
>In 1996, Republican Rep. Jay Dickey removed $2.6 million from the CDC budget — the precise amount the CDC spent on gun research in 1995 — at a time when the center was conducting more studies into gun-related deaths as a "public health phenomenon," according to The New York Times. The NRA and some pro-gun Congressmen perceived this as more of an attack.
I don't agree. I see it as evidence that the NRA has fought against the CDC conducting policy advocacy. The CDC was advocating gun-control, so people got upset and cut their funding. Then a law was put on the books saying they weren't allowed to use funds for that sort of advocacy, and their funding was restored. I don't see any evidence that the research itself has ever been the target.
The CDC currently has both the funding and legal ability to perform gun violence research, but choose not to. In my mind, if you want more research on this topic, you should be pressuring the CDC to resume it.
The line between 'advocacy' and 'research' is not as clear as you suggest. There are plenty of people who will label any form of gun research by the CDC as advocacy:
"Timothy Wheeler, director of the group Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, said Congress had good reason to stop the CDC’s firearm inquiries. "It was what we call advocacy research," Wheeler said. "It was research done with a preordained goal, and that goal was gun control." Wheeler, voicing an opinion shared by many in the gun-rights movement, said the CDC has been "irredeemably tainted" by past controversy. "I don't have faith in them anymore," Wheeler said. [1]
So it seems that CDC is avoiding gun research in order to reduce the risk of having their funding cut in other areas. From the Washington Post again:
The agency recently was asked by The Washington Post why it was still sitting on the sidelines of firearms studies. It declined to make an official available for an interview but responded with a statement noting it had commissioned an agenda of possible research goals but still lacked the dedicated funding to pursue it.
But Republicans aren't interested in providing funding for dedicated research:
Congress has continued to block dedicated funding. Obama requested $10 million for the CDC’s gun violence research in his last two budgets. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced bills supporting the funding. Both times the Republican-controlled House of Representatives said no.
If Republicans consider the CDC to be tainted, why not establish a new, independent agency to conduct research into firearms?
Understandable. Comment quality does tend to be pretty low for throw-away accounts. Unfortunately I don't maintain a regular account and (perhaps naively) hope that the quality of any comment I make will speak for itself and not be bolstered or disregarded simply because of who posted it.
I suppose these topics are inevitable when an article like this is posted, but I'll try to take your comment to heart and not jump down the political rabbit-hole so easily.
It's not so much who posted it as much as HN strives to be a community. There's a difference between anonymity and pseudonymity; the latter allows for community, and the former is a very different type of place.
Yes, but if it really is advocacy there's no reason to fund it with tax money. I have no interest in having money taken from my paycheck to generate advocacy for political positions contrary to my own.
The CDC lost a lot of respect and public trust as a result of that gun "research". Respect and public trust it's going to need to carry out its actual mission, which is disease control.
And no, I don't agree that simply doing research is inherently advocacy. All you have shown is you suspect the truth disagrees with your beliefs which is something you should consider more deeply. Cognitive dissonance is a sign that something you believe is false and ignoring that is a bad idea.
PS: Thank you for acknowledging your above statement was wrong. I am going to assume it means you where not simply trolling.
No, research isn't inherently advocacy. But it can be advocacy depending on the way you do it - what you include in your studies and what you exclude. What you lump together when you roll up the numbers. And everybody knows this.
It's not that I suspect the truth disagrees with my beliefs - it's that I suspect my tax money is being used to propagandize my fellow citizens in an effort to erode my civil rights.
As to your p.s... 1) you are confused, and 2) people who assume other people are trolling when they meet disagreement aren't doing a good job of defending their own beliefs.
geaserg34234 is a very similar name and 18 hours old that started this thread which is where the trolling assumption came from.
1) you just acknowled NRA has fought against the CDC conducting and then acknowled CDC where conducting research. Which means you acknowledged the NRA was fighting research. You may feel it was biased or that the NRA was in the right or whatnot, but that's a completely separate point that I really don't care about. NRA's job is to support a viewpoint so that's what they are going to do.
>You may feel it was biased or that the NRA was in the right or whatnot, but that's a completely separate point that I really don't care about.
Um... okay. Whether or not the research is biased doesn't matter to you? That's an interesting position. Of what acutal value is biased research?
>NRA's job is to support a viewpoint so that's what they are going to do.
Yes, and the point was that's not the CDC's job. The day we start supporting the NRA with tax dollars is the day we can hold them up to the same scrutiny.
I really can't get worked up over 0.00006% of the federal budget. That's into fractions of a penny of my annual tax bill.
Anyway, the CDC's job is promote public health and they have an office of public policy so advocacy really does fall under their mandate as required by law. Ed: As does Saw Blade Guards oddly enough. Now, you can disagree with that mandate, but nobody was blowing public money on hookers and blow or something.
>NRA has fought against the CDC conducting policy advocacy. The CDC was advocating gun-control, so people got upset and cut their funding.
isn't it is normal duty of CDC to advocate for policies preventing epidemic deaths, like virus/bacterial control in hospitals? Guns kill people like a widespread virus (it doesn't really matter who carries the virus or a gun, be it human, bird, etc..) and such advocating does seems fitting for CDC.
Funding was cut for the CDC's gun-related activities at the same time as they were banned from advocating policy. Being "allowed" to research it but not having any money to do so is pointless.
Last Week Tonight did a great piece last season about the circular logic the NRA and its supporters employ to prevent a rational gun control discussion. They fight tooth and nail to stop governments from collecting data related to gun deaths than use the lack of good data as the reason why we cant have a gun control debate.
Effective gun control means something like no private pistol ownership and tightly limited ownership of long guns with small internal magazines.
I mean, this is a political non goal, not nearly enough people agree with it, but let's not pretend that rules about pistol grips on rifles mean anything.
It would still be quite interesting to have a referendum on a constitutional amendment that provided clear legal powers for such restrictions. Not because I particularly think it would succeed, just to see the numbers.
Heh. No really... what would you give up? Compromise means you have to provide something to the other side. I hope you looked at the link I posted.
Suggestion: fixing gun rights to be like driving rights, recognized in every state, so that driving from New Hampshire to Texas with a gun isn't a felony. (imagine if you needed a separate driver's license for each state)
Suggestion: allow mufflers on firearms to help prevent hearing loss. We allow mufflers on cars.
Suggestion: where carry is allowed, it may be concealed, and non-concealed is never worse than a fine.
Got any ideas? Remember, it has to be something the gun owners would actually like. Without giving something up, you aren't making a compromise. You're just taking more of the cake.
No where is it written that the path forward must be compromise.
My argument is that a healthy society would choose to let people have a tictac rather than arguing about cake. The taking away the cake is just a rhetorical framing device to make the argument about taking something away rather than about what is reasonable for society as it exists today.
You say I hope you looked at the link I posted. but apparently didn't pay much attention to where I conceded that it is not politically plausible to move to a strict gun control regime in the US (and I readily concede that steps less than a strict gun control regime will not be especially effective in reducing gun violence). I think the first step towards a better situation with guns in the US is to convince people to stop owning them using means other than the law. Then I don't have to compromise with them anymore to get stronger laws.
It's not just that this is about taking something away. It's that, rather than give-and-take, it's all take. Gun owners see a ratchet effect. For a very long time, things only went one way. Gun owners lost rights again and again and again. Changes would never go the other way.
A lesson has been learned, and now nobody will give an inch. With today's gun owners putting up a fight, not much happens. They seldom win or lose; we are held to the status quo even though both sides might benefit from a bit of horse trading.
The trust isn't there. Consider registration: Gun owners would support registration except for the fact that history shows that registration is typically the first step toward confiscation, and this was even seen as recently as during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The cops lost in court, but the guns were already taken and destroyed. With events like that, and with gun opposition often having the stated goal of ultimately having a ban, the paranoia is justified.
Ownership went way up under Obama. The more people thought he or Clinton might restrict guns, the more guns people bought. There was also the matter of BLM and other riots, and a bit of terrorism here and there, and immigration. People buy guns when they don't feel safe.
Speaking of rhetorical framing devices, what is this "gun violence"? People can be violent, crazy, and evil. Guns are no more violent than knives, baseball bats, pit bulls, 5 irons, cars, hammers, and heroin. You're trying to put the focus on an inanimate object instead of on the guilty.
I've stated above that I think a strict gun control regime would be necessary to effect real change in the US and that I don't think it is feasible.
What are you trying to argue with?
Also, people that bought guns because they are afraid of Black Lives Matter (not a riot, that's a gross mischaracterization), riots, terrorism and immigration aren't very good at risk analysis.
The long term trend over the last 200 years is gun advocates are slowly losing. As someone that enjoys shooting that does bother me, but don't expect public gun ownership to be a thing in 200 years without some fundamental changes.
Personally, I would focus on winnable fights. But, politically having red flag issues tend to get out the voters.
Technology has changed too much to make any sort of reasonable comparison of gun politics today with those of two hundred years ago. Certainly the national mood has shifted toward fewer restrictions on guns over the last generation.
If you want recent comparison then while gun technology has changed little, there has been a 10+% drop in private gun ownership from 1961 to now. Though there is some very high error bars on those statistics. Hunting has also become significantly less popular.
These really are significant shifts is public behavior. And eventually public attitudes really do influence politics.
IMO, advocating for the rights of gun owners is a losing strategy, you need to promote gun ownership.
With all respect, that segment did nothing to further rational discussion. I do not see how yelling hateful things from across the isle is a 'great piece'. The way forward is finding common ground.
Just watched the piece... didn't see any "hateful" things being yelled. Can you point out which statements you meant? What exactly is your definition of hateful? If you are personally a staffer of or one of the 5 million members of the NRA, I guess I could see how you find Oliver's rhetoric harsh... but hateful? And if you're not, why do you take personal offense on the NRA's behalf?
Why single out "NRA-backed politicians"? This is common in politics. The Obama justice department, for example, stopped publishing other potentially relevant characteristics of the people doing the shooting.
(I'm aware that the author of that piece is a known racist and not particularly accurate in general. But his facts - which are obtained mainly by reading a specific BJS webpage - check out: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2173 )
Like it or not, whoever controls the government will try to prevent facts inconvenient to their narrative from being published.
That seems rather weak. The info is still available, you just have to put together your own summary.
I'd wager there's a good chance this summary was removed for more mundane reasons, too. That 2010 table they link to only counts two possible victim races, white and black, and the only options for the offender are white, black, other, and unknown. That's awfully limited given the wide spectrum of humanity we actually have, and maybe they just didn't want to build a gigantic and unreadable table accounting for all the various possibilities.
The census has 6 racial categories. A 7x7 table wouldn't be hard to do. And realistically, the current table is good enough since the vast majority of crime is committed by the two racial categories you mention.
Hide all the information because a table might be grow from 3x3 to 7x7? Will we run out of pixels in a pdf file?
The 2010 census questionnaire includes 15 races, and it's multiple choice, so there are 32,767 possibilities. Then there's a "hispanic origin" question which has 5 choices, for a total of about 160,000 categories.
I'm sure the classifications for crimes are somewhat more coarse.
I suppose you'd have no problem at all if the Trump EPA made raw climate measurements available, but told the EPA they can't summarize it for laypeople and innumerate reporters?
It's really crazy how many open questions there are around this data.
On another note, the competing explanations are interesting. I just moved out of Baltimore recently, and remember a number of high profile targeted shootings. Recently some friends of mine were in a cafe in the arts district, and a man walked in and shot someone sitting at a table six times, then fled the scene. No one else was shot. It seems this kind of crime is prevalent there, but the data are scant and poorly reported.
At first, I though maybe the data examined in the article might have some correlation with organized crime presence in the cities, but then I realized that if I were a professional assassin, I would probably never use a gun unless the client demanded it. I would almost certainly use automobile collisions in preference to almost everything else. And then I realized that most criminals are not clever enough to plan like that, and might just kick down a door, shoot someone, and run away during the emergency response window.
Shooters in Baltimore apparently invest more conscious effort in ensuring their targets are dead than other cities. A 10% higher lethality rate than other cities seems way too high to be explainable by accidental factors.
Start by mapping out your target's usual movements. Check public records for any fatal collision hot spots in the area. Check out their vehicle. That will determine what you do next.
For instance, if I were trying to kill me, I'd find out that I usually take the same routes to and from work every day, passing twice through one intersection that has a relatively high number of injury accidents, in a Honda. So I would either crack the remote access security of the traffic control computer, or install a device in it that would allow me to control it remotely. I'd break into my car, replacing the air bag with one modified to outwardly resemble those recalled, defective, exploding Takata air bags, but guaranteed to explosively project shrapnel into the driver. This would be relatively easy, as my car is not parked in a secured or observed spot. Then I'd use my remote device and binoculars twice a day, until I saw that I was passing through the dangerous intersection, and try to manipulate the lights to get myself into a t-bone with a larger vehicle at 45 MPH. On impact, the air bag would deploy with metal shrapnel and loose screws, shredding my chest, face, and neck. That, plus any injuries from the collision itself, would likely be fatal. Just in case, the air bag device would also contain cloth infused with resistant bacteria cultured from the local hospital, so that any open wounds would be infected, antibiotic-resistant wounds.
I might also do a weak denial of service attack on the local emergency medical response immediately after the collision, using a recorded message to 911 from a burner phone. The message would suggest a high-priority emergency, such as a stroke or obstructed airway, and hang up.
The other driver would swear that I ran the red light, and I would be too dead to say it was actually green. The local cops would likely just sweep up the glass, rule it as an unfortunate accident, and not investigate further. The auto manufacturer might catch some flak for not mailing me a recall notice for my air bag, but I'd be the 12th recall fatality, and no one would really care. My target's bereaved spouse might even get a settlement.
That would just be for me, though. Someone else might get a flat tire in the wrong spot, or hit a patch of black ice on a day that's too warm for it. Or they might get their onboard computer hacked, or hallucinogenic vapor in their interior air. Or maybe they get catfished by someone who starts sending crisis texts while the target is driving.
Excuse me now, as I'm going to silently rock back and forth in the corner and pretend my world is safe.
> Murders (as a statstic) are controversial but indisputable.
Homicides are (to a reasonable approximation, but even then not quite) indisputable, murders (or even "criminal homicides") aren't, even approximately.
It's not clear to me what you would suggest as a solution to quantify shootings (as opposed to homicides). I don't think it's useful or desired to abandon the attempt to do so. Do you think there's no way to provide a framework or set of guidelines to quantify shootings?
I think we need a few numbers, and they won't be easily understood by casual observers. And we will need to take the numbers with a grain of salt and put them in context.
Can you elaborate with specifics you'd like to see? Your initial comment is a top-level comment, which I take to address the submitted article. The article provides quite a few numbers (not surprising, given it's from 538).
Both this comment and your initial one lean towards people being able to dismiss anything that doesn't agree with one's beliefs as not being put in the correct context or with adequate seasoning. ("I suspect the numbers will be politicized and manipulated until they are no longer a good measure.", "we will need to take the numbers with a grain of salt and put them in context."). All stats and data in any field require this. The goal of good writing and analysis is that it presents the data in their proper context, whether it be physics, biology, computer science, or epidemiology.
Edit to add: The reason I'm pushing is that there needs to be some agreement and common understanding if people are to move forward and discuss issues constructively and work out effective solutions. While varying perspectives are important and valid, continuing to rely on this (as it seems to increasingly be) as a reason to disagree with people to the point of standstill is preventing us from finding agreement on what what problems are and how they should be addressed.
Think about economic stats -- there are a ton of numbers (GDP, inflation, unemployment, etc.). They are somewhat useful, but they are also highly politicized which limits their usefulness.
I see the same thing happening here. They shouldn't be dismissed, but not taken at face value, either.
I remember this coming up in the Wire, and interestingly Baltimore has one of the highest rates of fatalities from shootings. I wonder if Baltimore police actually are juking their stats like they were on the show.
"Some other experts have speculated that differences in shooting death rates could be tied to differences in emergency medical care: Gunshot victims are more likely to survive if they arrive quickly to a high-quality trauma center. By that logic, however, Baltimore should be one of the least lethal cities in the country. Dr. Sahael Stapleton, a surgeon who previously conducted research at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, points out that Baltimore gun violence takes place in relatively concentrated areas near the city’s state-of-the-art trauma center."
The general takeaway is that data collection is too incomplete and too inconsistent across jurisdictions to test lots of hypotheses well.
That's mentioned near the end of the article, near the call for better data:
> Some other experts have speculated that differences in shooting death rates could be tied to differences in emergency medical care: Gunshot victims are more likely to survive if they arrive quickly to a high-quality trauma center. By that logic, however, Baltimore should be one of the least lethal cities in the country. Dr. Sahael Stapleton, a surgeon who previously conducted research at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, points out that Baltimore gun violence takes place in relatively concentrated areas near the city’s state-of-the-art trauma center.
> There may be dozens or hundreds of other factors — the placement of ambulances or the amount of street lighting, for example — that may help explain why shootings in certain cities are more lethal than those in others. Without further research, however, it’s impossible to say for sure what drives these differences.
What correlation, exactly? Picking a few cities from the list and comparing racial demographics and the relative shooting/murder rates, I didn't see much connection.
Non-Hispanic blacks (2.8 per 1,000) and Hispanics (2.2 per 1,000) had higher rates of nonfatal firearm violence than non-Hispanic whites (1.4 per 1,000)
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fv9311pr.cfm
The topic here is not overall gun violence, but specifically the percentage of shootings that result in death, and the fact that this percentage is extremely different in different cities.
For some reason their two tables don't include the same cities, and the numbers don't quite match up. Doing the same thing from the first table, which includes more cities, produces this:
For example, Chicago's lethality rate is almost half of New Orleans (16.3% vs 27.9%). Having been to both cities, I've noticed that Chicago has remarkably long city blocks (1/8th mile per block iirc), with wide sidewalks and numerous alleyways, and a very straight and regular grid in most of the South and West side sprawl. New Orleans trends towards the opposite (though it's also much more varied than Chicago), with narrow sidewalks, lots of narrow one way streets, and irregular grid layouts. It's easy to see how New Orlean's geography could favor the attacker and lead to higher lethality. Would be interesting to see these geographic features quantified in some way.