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A way to measure gun violence in America

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#31

Post by hugh4 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #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 a…

> This is posing the question wrong. If some area has half as many fatalities per gunshot, they're clearly doing something right.

Not necessarily, I'd imagine easy availability of fully-automatic weapons would lower your fatalities-per-gunshot ratio but not be a good thing.

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#32

Post by parennoob »

hugh4 wrote: post #30
parennoob wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sure, there were probably a few drunks firing into the air, but that's more reckless than violent Seeing as it can lead to fatalities to bystanders [1], I would be fine calling it "violent". [EDIT: "potentially violent" being perhaps a better term]. In my opinion, this is why at last gun education would be a good bipartisan way to reduce gun accidents (if not gun crime). If a police dispatcher does not think that f…

> Seeing as it can lead to fatalities to bystanders, I would be fine calling it "violent". No, I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless.

> I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless.

I think (and this is where I probably differ from other people) that the discharge of a death-dealing weapon that is far deadlier than a gun or a knife implies at least a potential for violence. I guess I wouldn't go so far as to classify a death from it as actual violent crime though, which seems to be what you are driving at.

To explain this analogy a bit, if a drunk person is running down the street swinging a chainsaw for purposes of "celebrating" New Year, do you think he will be reported to the police as potentially violent? Why should drunks firing guns be different?

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#33

Post by hugh4 »

parennoob wrote: post #32
hugh4 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seeing as it can lead to fatalities to bystanders, I would be fine calling it "violent". No, I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless.

> I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless. I think (and this is where I probably differ from other people) that the discharge of a death-dealing weapon that is far deadlier than a gun or a knife implies at least a potential for violence. I guess I wouldn't go so far as to classify a death from it as actual violent crime though, whi…

Because the drunk with the chainsaw knows whether or not he's slicing up someone at any given time.

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#34

Post by pcl »

robsears wrote: post #11

> The more telling number about gun violence might be “shots fired.” And now, thanks to broader adoption of new technologies, it is getting easier to show just how common gun violence is in America. I happened to be working with a dispatcher in a 9-11 call center on the night the bin Laden raid was announced. Over the course of a couple hours, we fielded hundreds of "shots fired" calls, which mostly turned out to be…

My point is that the author is advocating collecting statistics in a way that equates gang shootouts and backfiring cars as equal incidents of gun violence.

You've identified a problem with using human reports as a means to measure the number of shots fired, whereas the author suggests that some abstract "shots fired" count would be a better measure than homicides and injuries.

The author doesn't propose a suggested methodology for how to do so, but the metrics that he presents are from ShotSpotter deployments. These sorts of systems are designed to identify gunfire in particular, and so are presumably more reliable than monitoring 911 traffic.

Note that he identifies a number of other weaknesses with ShotSpotter-based data -- doesn't pick up indoor shots very well, and is of limited nationwide coverage, for example.

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#35

Post by parennoob »

hugh4 wrote: post #33
parennoob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless. I think (and this is where I probably differ from other people) that the discharge of a death-dealing weapon that is far deadlier than a gun or a knife implies at least a potential for violence. I guess I wouldn't go so far as to classify a death from it as actual violent crime though, whi…

Because the drunk with the chainsaw knows whether or not he's slicing up someone at any given time.

Not necessarily. People who are drunk are not always aware of their actions. His vision and judgement could be very impaired depending upon how drunk he is.

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#37

Post by fiatmoney »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #15

What's the cheapest device one could build that isn't a firearm, but could reproduce the sound of a gunshot with enough fidelity to fool this thing? Bonus if it can do a nice AK-47 machine gun sound or something like that. Assume that the device requires electricity. It probably should be wifi-connected, so that if you can get it close enough to a Starbucks or something, you can control it remotely. Should ideally be…

In most jurisdictions, one can order full-auto blank guns that are not firearms. It would usually be illegal to fire them in a city.

https://www.blank-guns-depot.com/blank-firing-guns-store/cat...

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#38

Post by pandaman »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #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 a…

Could be as simple as twice as many false positives in DC or half of shots undetected in Oakland.

Re: A way to measure gun violence in America

#39

Post by mozumder »

kec wrote: post #12
capote wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The question is more why do we treat assault and homicide where a firearm is involved differently from other instances of assault and homicide? Dead is dead, no matter the manner in which it happened.

Why do pro-gun agenda people always say that violence would continue to exist without guns?

Do they think people would replace guns with knives? What makes them think that people wouldn't just give up?

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