
A way to measure gun violence in America - bootload
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/23/this-may-be-the-best-way-to-measure-gun-violence-in-america/
======
robsears
> 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 people
lighting off fireworks (sure, there were probably a few drunks firing into the
air, but that's more reckless than violent).

If "gun violence" had been measured by these reports, the raw stats would
suggest that the entire city had spontaneously erupted into a warzone, and
then spontaneously returned to normal, all for no reason and without a single
injury or death.

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.
The system is guaranteed to generate lots false positives, which will be used
to bolster support for more surveillance and gun control. Not only is it _not_
a better way to measure gun violence, it's a proposition so fundamentally
flawed that it borders on insanity.

~~~
parennoob
> 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 firing into the air is serious problem and can _kill people_ ,
that in itself is a big problem.

I was browsing the ShotSpotter website, and they have a paper that talks
specifically about celebratory gunfire. [2]

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14616491](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14616491)

[2] [http://www.shotspotter.com/system/content-
uploads/MYTHS_abou...](http://www.shotspotter.com/system/content-
uploads/MYTHS_about_Celebratory_Gunfire.pdf)

~~~
hugh4
> 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.

~~~
parennoob
> 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?

~~~
hugh4
Because the drunk with the chainsaw knows whether or not he's slicing up
someone at any given time.

~~~
parennoob
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.

------
vilderbar_nugg
"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?

~~~
JoBrad
It wouldn't be difficult to detect false positives based on the signature of a
gun shot vs other loud noises.

~~~
capote
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.

~~~
saulrh
Lots of differences that can be pulled out algorithmically. Gunshots are much
sharper, as they're mechanical/aerodynamic rather than chemical, and are
linear rather than point sources. Receivers placed across the city will record
differently dopplered shockwaves based on how close they are to being in line
with the bullet's trajectory. If you really wanted to, I bet that you could go
around the city after installation and set off firecrackers in a grid to map
out the city's acoustics, then reconstruct bullet trajectory down to thirty or
forty meters. Which'd be pretty cool.

Of course, all that goes away in the case of subsonic rounds. Then your only
real difference is that a gun propellant is going to have a much faster
velocity than the gunpowder in fireworks and the explosion is going to be
rather better contained. You'll probably still be able to differentiate, but
I'm not sure how effectively, especially over long distances.

~~~
ggreer
> Of course, all that goes away in the case of subsonic rounds.

I'm pretty sure that presents a problem. Many handgun rounds have subsonic
muzzle velocities, and most are subsonic within 50 feet. And according to the
FBI's Uniform Crime Reports[1], almost half of all murders are committed with
handguns. Rifles are used in around 2-3%. (For comparison, 5-6% of murders are
committed with bare hands.) Those numbers underestimate the ratio of rounds
fired by handguns vs rifles, as being shot with a rifle is far more likely to
result in death than being shot with a handgun. If the victim doesn't die,
they won't show up in those FBI stats.

1\. FBI Uniform Crime Report on murder weapon type:
[https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2013/...](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-
enforcement/expanded-
homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2009-2013.xls)

~~~
saulrh
I figured the numbers were something like that. Darn.

------
presidentender
Why is 'gun violence' so dire that it deserves its own category, relative to
other forms of harm?

~~~
capote
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.

~~~
kec
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.

~~~
mozumder
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?

~~~
kec
As a counterpoint, why do pro gun-control people always assume that violence
would cease without guns? Guns do not motivate people to commit crime, only
give them the means to.

People in general are pretty clever. If you take away someone's means to do
something without addressing what motivated them to do that thing, they're
likely going to figure out a way to do it anyway. (See: censorship, DRM, drug
prohibition)

~~~
krapp
Pro-gun control people don't assume that violence would cease without guns.
Guns are designed and intended to be a force multiplier - one person with a
gun can kill far more people far more easily than they could without a gun.
Rather, pro gun-control people simply argue that a society without guns or
with fewer guns is less violent than a society with more of them, and that the
violence is more localized and easier to contain, for that reason.

Anti-gun control people actually agree with pro-gun control people on this
point when they describe gun control as a means of a tyrannical state to
pacify the populace, because, they warn, the lack of an armed populace makes
it more difficult to commit violence against the state. This is a rationale
codified into modern interpretations of the Second Amendment.

By extension, a populace less able to commit violence against the state is
equally less able to commit violence against itself.

Really, both pro and anti gun-control people want a safe and secure society
(excepting of course the lunatic and criminal fringe) but they disagree as to
the role of guns in providing that safety and security. Unfortunately, it's
become kind of a matter of religion for each side, so discussions which aren't
fraught with hyperbole, strawmen and willful ignorance are difficult to have.

~~~
hga
You've largely got the lay of the land correct. I'd add:

These two "religions" are irreconcilable; the pro-gun control group has, since
at least the '70s when I started closely following this and being an anti-gun
control activist, made it crystal clear that many of them will not be
satisfied until they've taken all of our guns (or nearly so, e.g. the over and
under shotgun class like Biden, what e.g. the U.K. has devolved to at the same
time they've reversed the trend since the 13th Century of decreasing
interpersonal violence). In return, we've made it clear that we know our 20th
Century history, if they get very far in this, we'll kill them, wholesale and
retail. No common ground possible there.

Second, this is part of a larger cultural war. We need look no further than
now President Obama saying in 2008:

 _You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns
in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing 's
replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush
administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these
communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion
or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations._

Third, there have been some major changes in gun owning demographics, purposes
and the like, part of what some call Gun Culture 2.0, and it really started
becoming a thing post-9/11, when the Federal government made it clear we were
on our own. The other part is a rapidly graying society as the Baby Boomers
reached middle age and now retirement age. For whatever reasons, a very large
fraction of them are turning to guns for self-protection, e.g. the vast
majority of people in my 2008 Missouri CCW class were obviously middle aged or
older.

There's also been some massive changes on the ground: starting in 1987, "shall
issue" or better concealed carry regimes have swept the nation, such that they
hold in all but 7 states, and cover 72.6% of the population. Issued licences
are now growing by more than a million per year, the numbers are astounding,
and on a percentage basis have reached 5-10% of the population in shall issue
states.

In the same period, "Constitutional Carry", i.e. no permit required, went from
1 state, Vermont (which simply never restricted it post-Civil War) to 10, with
2 being added in the last month or so, and perhaps more to come this year.
That's now 7.2% of the above percentage. See this with nice graphs here:
[http://onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com/2016/04/every-
picture-t...](http://onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com/2016/04/every-picture-
tells-story-part-v.html) (although I'd add that DC, MD, and NJ are _de facto_
no issue states (for a demonstrated serious need, MD _may_ issue for the
duration of the threat), even if the law allows it; also, many local units of
CA, MA and NY are _de facto_ shall issue or thereabouts).

------
AnthonyMouse
> 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.

~~~
hugh4
> 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.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
This is kind of the point. The fatalities-per-gunshot ratio is quite
irrelevant. What matters is the number of injuries or fatalities.

If hypothetically giving out automatic weapons caused there to be more
gunshots because every time there was a gun battle many more shots were fired,
but it reduced the total number of shooting victims because now dealers are
much more wary about starting a gun battle, then you could make the argument
for giving out automatic weapons. Because what matters is the actual harm.

But if all it did was increase the number of gunshots by a lot and the number
of injuries by a little then it's clearly a bad thing. Because what matters is
still the actual harm.

------
nl
This makes more sense to me:
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/kentucky-gun-
ow...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/kentucky-gun-owner-gun-
violence-archive-mark-bryant)

------
ourcat
Stop watering it down by calling it "gun violence" and call it what it
actually is: "Murder" or "Attempted murder". With a gun.

What's needed isn't "gun control". You can have that. What you need is "bullet
control". (And a sense of humanity).

------
adaml_623
Is being robbed at gunpoint part of 'gun violence'?

------
norikki
I think the whole USA should be a gun-free zone. That way, no one can commit
any more crimes.

------
fiatmoney
It's important to measure "gun violence" that apparently harms no one, because
otherwise we wouldn't be able to claim the level of "gun violence" is high
enough to justify Gun Control Measure X.

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
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 small and unobtrusive so that
it's not easily spotted. Shouldn't need any refillable fuels.

Would be fun to put the plans up on the net so that many people would build
and field these.

~~~
fiatmoney
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...](https://www.blank-guns-depot.com/blank-firing-guns-
store/catalog/Fully-Automatic-Blank-Firing-Guns-p-1-c-407.html)

