4 ms·

Killings in the U.S. are dropping at a historic rate. Will anyone notice?

15 points by laurex 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago
How about schoolshootings?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Those are included in "homicides".
- causi 3y ago
  Up, but still effectively a rounding error on US firearm homicide at 0.7%.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  They’re shameful, but a tiny proportion of US shootings. The indiscriminate kind that’s what most people mean when they worry about school shootings, is a much smaller proportion still. Average odds of a kid being present—not hurt, present—for any kind of shooting on any of their school campuses at any time for their 13 k-12 years remains quite low (though much higher at some schools, and basically zero at others). I’d expect any given year’s data to be noisy enough that it’d be hard to analyze trends year to year, given the relatively small figures involved. More like decade to decade.
mistrial9 3y ago
election year "good news" really? no cessation of shootings in the US West Coast here.. (some say that Emergency medicine is so good that the death rate decreases a lot.. therefore affecting the stats on the subject)
- zwieback 3y ago
  Injuries are also down according to the stats, though.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  Violent crime stats tracking down at a similar rate suggests most of the explanation isn’t better medical care (though some of it might be!)
- clipsy 3y ago
  What election is happening this year?
- yuppie_scum 3y ago
  There are lies, damn lies, and statistics
sys32768 3y ago
This site is an excellent resource for gun violence statistics: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
xnx 3y ago
It's more than a little annoying that an article like this doesn't have a single chart. For sure, there's a lot of deception that can be done with charts, but they can also instantly provide a lot of context. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  Your chart doesn’t contain 2022 data that the article references. It also appears to be of a different source maybe?
  - xnx 3y ago
    Indeed. I was looking for something that would show a chart directly instead of 1) Open https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... 2) Select 1985 - 2022 3) Select Homicide I think that one chart tells a better story than all the up/down percentage language in the article.
- bitshiftfaced 3y ago
  It looks like the source that the article links to allows you to look at a chart. The 2022 figure appears to be 6.1.
throw0101c 3y ago
Malcolm Gladwell had a series on guns for his Revisionist History podcast a little while, and episode four ("Moral Hazard") found some interesting numbers: * https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-part-4-moral-hazard https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-par... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl7c_O_XtfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl7c_O_XtfU From the transcript: > Now, think about the implications of that in a place like Washington, DC. In the last 30 years, the number of homicides in Washington in a typical year has been cut in half. People look at that statistic and say, "Oh, the city's gotten a lot safer." But isn't some part of that decline simply that Eddie Cornwell and Mallory Williams and all the other trauma surgeons of Washington, DC are now saving lives that were once lost? > A city's murder rate is not a measure of the number of people victimized by potentially lethal violence. No. It's a measure of the number of people victimized by potentially lethal violence minus how good a job doctors do at saving that person's life once they get to the hospital. […] > And what they found is that every way you look at it, gun violence in Memphis got worse in that period. The number of gunshot wounds they saw increased. In fact, the number went up 59% just between 2010 and 2015. > The severity of the wounds they saw got worse. The number of people being wheeled in with multiple gunshot wounds more than tripled. In absolutely every sense, the patients coming into that hospital in those years showed that Memphis was becoming a dramatically more dangerous place. > But what happened to the mortality rate of gunshot victims coming into that hospital during that period? It went down. It dropped by a third. The trauma doctors at the University of Tennessee Medical Center are so good that they made the increase in bloodshed on the streets of Memphis all but invisible. > So what does the homicide rate in Memphis tell us about the level of violence in Memphis? Nothing. That's implication number one. We probably should stop using homicide rates as a measure of how safe and healthy a community is. He interviews trauma surgeons, but also researchers looking at this statistics, like Natalie Hipple: * https://news.iu.edu/live/profiles/975-natalie-hipple https://news.iu.edu/live/profiles/975-natalie-hipple Medical care then connects into episode five ("The Footnote") of the series: * https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-part-5-the-footnote https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-par... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGIU1CKpnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGIU1CKpnY From the transcript: > [Quoting Gundlach and Hanke's study:] "Although this is by no means a definitive study of the issue, the strength of the findings is striking. The Tutwiler Prison data suggested that almost one fourth of the African American female killers might not have been in prison for the killing, had their victims received the same transportation and medical care as their Caucasian counterparts." > The study covered 468 African American murderers at Tutwiler. So that's 113 people who wouldn't have been convicted for homicide if their victims had received the same medical attention as white people. They would have been convicted on lesser charges like aggravated assault. They wouldn't be murderers. So yes, homicide numbers may be down, but it does not necessarily follow that violence is also down if other factors are not taken into account.

15 points by laurex 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago

How about schoolshootings?

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Those are included in "homicides".
causi 3y ago
Up, but still effectively a rounding error on US firearm homicide at 0.7%.
hotnfresh 3y ago
They’re shameful, but a tiny proportion of US shootings. The indiscriminate kind that’s what most people mean when they worry about school shootings, is a much smaller proportion still. Average odds of a kid being present—not hurt, present—for any kind of shooting on any of their school campuses at any time for their 13 k-12 years remains quite low (though much higher at some schools, and basically zero at others). I’d expect any given year’s data to be noisy enough that it’d be hard to analyze trends year to year, given the relatively small figures involved. More like decade to decade.

mistrial9 3y ago

election year "good news" really? no cessation of shootings in the US West Coast here.. (some say that Emergency medicine is so good that the death rate decreases a lot.. therefore affecting the stats on the subject)

zwieback 3y ago
Injuries are also down according to the stats, though.
hotnfresh 3y ago
Violent crime stats tracking down at a similar rate suggests most of the explanation isn’t better medical care (though some of it might be!)
clipsy 3y ago
What election is happening this year?
yuppie_scum 3y ago
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics

sys32768 3y ago

This site is an excellent resource for gun violence statistics: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

xnx 3y ago

It's more than a little annoying that an article like this doesn't have a single chart. For sure, there's a lot of deception that can be done with charts, but they can also instantly provide a lot of context. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...

alphabettsy 3y ago
Your chart doesn’t contain 2022 data that the article references. It also appears to be of a different source maybe?
- xnx 3y ago
  Indeed. I was looking for something that would show a chart directly instead of 1) Open https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... 2) Select 1985 - 2022 3) Select Homicide I think that one chart tells a better story than all the up/down percentage language in the article.
bitshiftfaced 3y ago
It looks like the source that the article links to allows you to look at a chart. The 2022 figure appears to be 6.1.

throw0101c 3y ago

Malcolm Gladwell had a series on guns for his Revisionist History podcast a little while, and episode four ("Moral Hazard") found some interesting numbers: * https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-part-4-moral-hazard https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-par... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl7c_O_XtfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl7c_O_XtfU From the transcript: > Now, think about the implications of that in a place like Washington, DC. In the last 30 years, the number of homicides in Washington in a typical year has been cut in half. People look at that statistic and say, "Oh, the city's gotten a lot safer." But isn't some part of that decline simply that Eddie Cornwell and Mallory Williams and all the other trauma surgeons of Washington, DC are now saving lives that were once lost? > A city's murder rate is not a measure of the number of people victimized by potentially lethal violence. No. It's a measure of the number of people victimized by potentially lethal violence minus how good a job doctors do at saving that person's life once they get to the hospital. […] > And what they found is that every way you look at it, gun violence in Memphis got worse in that period. The number of gunshot wounds they saw increased. In fact, the number went up 59% just between 2010 and 2015. > The severity of the wounds they saw got worse. The number of people being wheeled in with multiple gunshot wounds more than tripled. In absolutely every sense, the patients coming into that hospital in those years showed that Memphis was becoming a dramatically more dangerous place. > But what happened to the mortality rate of gunshot victims coming into that hospital during that period? It went down. It dropped by a third. The trauma doctors at the University of Tennessee Medical Center are so good that they made the increase in bloodshed on the streets of Memphis all but invisible. > So what does the homicide rate in Memphis tell us about the level of violence in Memphis? Nothing. That's implication number one. We probably should stop using homicide rates as a measure of how safe and healthy a community is. He interviews trauma surgeons, but also researchers looking at this statistics, like Natalie Hipple: * https://news.iu.edu/live/profiles/975-natalie-hipple https://news.iu.edu/live/profiles/975-natalie-hipple Medical care then connects into episode five ("The Footnote") of the series: * https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-part-5-the-footnote https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-par... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGIU1CKpnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGIU1CKpnY From the transcript: > [Quoting Gundlach and Hanke's study:] "Although this is by no means a definitive study of the issue, the strength of the findings is striking. The Tutwiler Prison data suggested that almost one fourth of the African American female killers might not have been in prison for the killing, had their victims received the same transportation and medical care as their Caucasian counterparts." > The study covered 468 African American murderers at Tutwiler. So that's 113 people who wouldn't have been convicted for homicide if their victims had received the same medical attention as white people. They would have been convicted on lesser charges like aggravated assault. They wouldn't be murderers. So yes, homicide numbers may be down, but it does not necessarily follow that violence is also down if other factors are not taken into account.