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Why Are Shootings Deadlier in Some Cities Than Others?
- rbcgerard 10y agoIt amazes me that we don't have better data on something like this.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 10y agoIt'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.
- throwanem 10y agoGot a link? I live a little way from there, but don't remember hearing about that one, and now I'm all curious.
- ch4s3 10y agoThere are a few companies and products: ACR Select- radiology focused: https://www.acr.org/Quality-Safety/Appropriateness-Criteria/ACR-Select https://www.acr.org/Quality-Safety/Appropriateness-Criteria/... Zynx Health - order set based: http://www.zynxhealth.com/ http://www.zynxhealth.com/ Ken Kawamoto - academic working on CDS: http://medicine.utah.edu/faculty/mddetail.php?facultyID=u0770443 http://medicine.utah.edu/faculty/mddetail.php?facultyID=u077... Avhana Health - point of care and patient specific: http://www.avhana.com/ http://www.avhana.com/ And there are a few others as well as systems built into some EHRs (electronic health records)
- ch4s3 10y agooops, meant to post this in another thread and can't delete it now
- ch4s3 10y agoHere's a link http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-red-emmas-shooting-20170203-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-red...
- gozur88 10y ago"Targeted shooting"? That's a no-shit assassination. All it needs is Chow Yun Fat and some sunglasses.
- ch4s3 10y agoWell, assassinations are usually political or for payment... so maybe? But probably just personal in this case.
- ashark 10y agoThe 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. http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence-research-2013-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence-re...
- geaserg34234 10y agoI 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.
- differentView 10y agoFrom the article: >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.
- geaserg34234 10y agoThat funding cut of $2.6M was restored afterwards.
- Retric 10y agoIt is evidence that NRA has fought research which is what you asked. Thus you have now seen evidence even if you don't agree with the conclusion.
- logfromblammo 10y agoAt 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.
- oh_sigh 10y agoHow do you plan out an automobile collision homicide?
- logfromblammo 10y agoStart 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.
- cal5k 10y agoOne other plausible explanation: the quality of trauma response protocols in different cities.
- trhway 10y agoif various TV shows to believe - emergency wouldn't come to some areas at all.
- azernik 10y agoRTFA "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.
- oh_sigh 10y agoThat'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.
- programmernews3 10y agoI notice a correlation between the cities studied and race. I am surprised that this obvious variable was not taken into account.
- mikeash 10y agoWhat 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.
- grardb 10y agoThis ^ Quick examples: Minneapolis, Boston, Nashville, and Cincinnati all have much higher percentages of non-Hispanic whites than Los Angeles and New York. Even if we look at black or Hispanic/Latino percentages: * Minneapolis: 18.6% black, 10.5% Hispanic/Latino * New York: 25.1% black, 27.5% Hispanic/Latino * Los Angeles: 9.6% black, 48.5% Hispanic/Latino I wouldn't go so far as to say that the data is "all over the place," but I would definitely not say there's a correlation with race.
- programmernews3 10y agowww.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-shaped-by-race-in-america/ 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 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fv9311pr.cfm http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=white--black--other http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-by-...
- _red 10y agoSeems like there is quite a different racial makeup of those listed cities. Is that question permitted to be asked?
- mikeash 10y agoCan you put some numbers on it? This is the second comment mentioning race and I just don't see the supposed link.
- _red 10y agoUsing top 4 and bottom 4 shows correlation. https://imgur.com/a/Imo9Y https://imgur.com/a/Imo9Y
- mikeash 10y agoI did a scatter plot of all of them and there's a bit of a trend, but for the most part it's just a mess: http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_19EB61AA-4DD0-4258-A5D5-A8AA3B47E98F.png http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_19EB61AA-4DD0-4258-A5D5-A8... 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: http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_C047DD43-3029-47E5-901C-9E28C9E6DEFD.png http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_C047DD43-3029-47E5-901C-9E... There is a bit of an upward trend there, but it looks pretty uncorrelated to be.
- arprocter 10y agoShot placement? That and getting a .22LR in the hand is a little different than getting a 12ga slug to the head
- bluedino 10y agoOne 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.
- esturk 10y agoI 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. http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-t...
- Retric 10y ago"clearance" is not the same as solved.
- jeffdavis 10y agoTo get good data it either needs to be either indisputable or non-controversial. Murders (as a statstic) are controversial but indisputable. But shootings are controversial and disputable. I suspect the numbers will be politicized and manipulated until they are no longer a good measure.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> 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.
- jeffdavis 10y agoFair enough.
- grzm 10y agoIt'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?
- jeffdavis 10y agoI 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.
- grzm 10y agoCan 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.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y agoOne 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.