A way to measure gun violence in America
washingtonpost.com
A way to measure gun violence in America
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#2> They noted with interest that it appears Oakland’s gunfire was at least twice as deadly as Washington’s gunfire. Although the researchers couldn’t come up with the reasons behind this difference (Were Washington’s gunmen poor shots? Did victims in Oakland get to the hospital more slowly?), the difference points to how measuring gun violence with homicides is problematic.
This is posing the question wrong. If some area has half as many fatalities per gunshot, they're clearly doing something right. The problematic thing is the implicit shifting of the question to "how to reduce gun violence" from "how to reduce harm" in the first place. Nobody is going to prefer the city that has half as many gunshots but twice as many fatalities.
The interesting thing about numbers like this is the unexplained difference. If you can explain it then maybe Oakland can do what Washington has been doing and fewer people will die -- even if that thing has nothing to do specifically with gun violence, like improving emergency response time.
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#3Why is 'gun violence' so dire that it deserves its own category, relative to other forms of harm?
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#4Why is 'gun violence' so dire that it deserves its own category, relative to other forms of harm?
Because guns kill more than anything else? (just a wild guess)
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#5This makes more sense to me: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/kentucky-gun-ow...
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#6Why is 'gun violence' so dire that it deserves its own category, relative to other forms of harm?
Because it's its own category of violence. Like any other category, it's not a matter of 'deserving', but rather just a statistic category so we can discuss and analyze it. What a strange question.
Why do we discuss it a lot? Because it's one of the most obvious issues in the US, compared to other advanced countries. We have shootings every day in many major urban centers, we have school shootings periodically, which people find especially awful...
And because there's a lot of political debate around it, and it's at the forefront of many political elections and campaigns.
It's a huge deal, and it's very dire; get caught up on this.
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#7"ShotSpotter, the company behind a technology that listens for gunfire's acoustic signature and reports it to authorities."
Yet another company spamming for yet another surveillance device.
tl;dr Statistically acceptable and verifiable measures(homicides, suicides, gunshot injuries) of gun violence are not shocking enough - we should replace them with counts of every potential gun shot fired.
"potential gun shot" = e.g., truck backfiring, dumpster lid dropping, slamming door, car collision, gunshot, etc.
Any stats available on how many "loud bangs" occur in a city each day?
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#8"ShotSpotter, the company behind a technology that listens for gunfire's acoustic signature and reports it to authorities." Yet another company spamming for yet another surveillance device. tl;dr Statistically acceptable and verifiable measures(homicides, suicides, gunshot injuries) of gun violence are not shocking enough - we should replace them with counts of every potential gun shot fired. "potential gun shot" = e…
It wouldn't be difficult to detect false positives based on the signature of a gun shot vs other loud noises.
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#9"ShotSpotter, the company behind a technology that listens for gunfire's acoustic signature and reports it to authorities." Yet another company spamming for yet another surveillance device. tl;dr Statistically acceptable and verifiable measures(homicides, suicides, gunshot injuries) of gun violence are not shocking enough - we should replace them with counts of every potential gun shot fired. "potential gun shot" = e…
It wouldn't be difficult to detect false positives based on the signature of a gun shot vs other loud noises.
I was gonna say, having heard a gunshot as well as the other stated things that could sound like gunshots, I think gunshots are categorically louder and more identifiable. That said, I'm not a gun expert so I could be wrong for different types of guns, etc.
Re: A way to measure gun violence in America
#10Why is 'gun violence' so dire that it deserves its own category, relative to other forms of harm?
Because it's its own category of violence. Like any other category, it's not a matter of 'deserving', but rather just a statistic category so we can discuss and analyze it. What a strange question. Why do we discuss it a lot? Because it's one of the most obvious issues in the US, compared to other advanced countries. We have shootings every day in many major urban centers, we have school shootings periodically, which…
[deleted]