In recent years, there has been a growing number of thefts of firearms stored in vehicles. Despite this trend, there is limited research on firearm storage patterns in vehicles in the United States. This study…
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Neighborhood predictors of suicide and firearm suicide in Detroit
Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States with rates increasing over the past two decades. The rate of suicide is higher in rural areas, but a greater number of people in urban areas die by suic…
Why do gun murders have a higher clearance rate than gunshot assaults?
Research Summary
The prevailing view is that follow-up investigations are of limited value as crimes are primarily cleared by patrol officers making on-scene arrests and through the presence of eyewitnesses and forensic evidence at the initial crime scene. We use a quasi-experimental design to compare investigative resources invested in clearing gun homicide cases relative to nonfatal gun assaults in Boston. We find the large gap in clearances (43% for gun murders vs. 19% for nonfatal gun assaults) is primarily a result of sustained investigative effort in homicide cases made after the first 2 days.
Policy Implications
Police departments should invest additional resources in the investigation of nonfatal gun assaults. When additional investigative effort is expended, law enforcement improves its success in gaining the cooperation of key witnesses and increases the amount of forensic evidence collected and analyzed. In turn, the capacity of the police to hold violent gun offenders accountable, deliver justice to victims, and prevent future gun attacks is enhanced.
US Surgeon General Declares Firearm Violence a Public Health Crisis
This Medical News article is an interview with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, and JAMA Editor in Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS, about a new advisory that declares gun violence a public health crisis.
What We Know About Foiled and Failed Mass School Shootings
Tragic gun violence incidents in schools—including Columbine High (1999), Sandy Hook Elementary (2012), Marjory Stoneman Douglas High (2018), and Robb Elementary (2022)—have made mass school shootings one of the greatest social and political concerns of the 21st century. Although these events are rare relative to other forms of school violence and gun violence at large, their negative impact on the emotional well-being of students, teachers, parents, and society cannot be understated. To address this concern, much academic research has been directed at understanding mass school shootings as a subtype of the public mass shooting phenomenon. Public mass shooting research has largely focused on completed incidents involving four or more victim fatalities. Despite these advancements, current research often excludes relevant cases that are characterized by mass shooting intent—resulting in fewer than four fatalities. In other words, research thus far has largely overlooked foiled and failed mass school shootings: incidents that are planned (foiled) or initiated (failed) but never manifest into an attempted or completed shooting (i.e., involving gunshot casualties).
There are a variety of ways that mass school shootings may be foiled or fail. Some mass school shooting plots are foiled before an offender can progress past the planning and preparation stage into actualized attack initiation. For example, in 2019, a 19-year-old student was planning to carry out a mass shooting at his university. He had been studying previous mass shootings for over a year so he could learn how to complete his attack. He purchased two firearms a week before his intended attack; however, his plot was foiled by fellow students who reported him to campus security after seeing the guns. During a search of his dorm room, police found ammunition and detailed plans (including a timeline) for completing his attack in addition to the firearms. In the end, the other students’ recognition of this potential threat and notification to school officials and police lead to the prevention of this mass school shooting attack.
In other situations, initiated mass school shootings may fail due to the rapid response of potential victims and guardians at the scene. For example, in 2018, a 19-year-old student arrived at his high school with a semiautomatic rifle, intending to commit a mass shooting during graduation rehearsal in the gymnasium. At the entrance of the gymnasium, however, the offender ran into a wrestling coach and opened fire, alerting students, faculty, and the school resource officer (SRO), all of whom responded quickly. Students and faculty engaged in lockdown procedures and the SRO pursued the shooter out of the building. Ultimately, the offender’s intentions failed, as he was the only casualty during the attack after being shot and injured by the SRO. This research brief explores what we know about both foiled and failed mass school shootings—referring to plots and incidents that resulted in zero victim casualties. These thwarted mass shootings—whether foiled or failed—are the ideal outcomes of a planned mass shooting. They are particularly useful for determining effective strategies to prevent incidents or intervene before innocent victims are harmed.
The Effects of Firearm Violence on Children
Exposure to firearm violence persists as an urgent public health problem because of its prevalence and impact. In the United States, firearms are now the leading cause of death among all children, ages 1-19 years old, and nonfatal firearm assaults occur at more than twice the rate for youth compared to the general population. Furthermore, recent work has highlighted that 92 percent of all firearm-related deaths of 5- to 14-year-old children in high-income countries occur in the US. Firearm violence affects children not only through direct exposure, such as being threatened, injured, or killed by a firearm, but also through indirect exposure by hearing or witnessing incidents or by losing a peer or family member to this form of violence. Tragically, the burden of firearm violence falls disproportionally on children of color, particularly young Black men between the ages of 15 and 24 in urban settings. Research further illustrates that Black children between the ages of 5 and 17 years were exposed to violence in their neighborhoods 4.44 times more frequently than white children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that these stark disparities have become even more pronounced since. An analysis of homicides in Washington, DC, in 2021 found that 89 percent of children of color (compared to 57 percent of white children) lived within a half mile of a homicide. In this brief, we describe the impact of exposure to violence on youth, review factors that are protective, highlight prevention and interventions for this urgent issue, and provide implications for policy.
Mass Shootings In The United States: Population Health Impacts And Policy Levers
The harmful effects of mass shootings on survivors’ and communities’ health are well-documented. There is an urgent need for additional research to understand which prevention and mitigation strategies are the most effective.
The roots of charity: How Gendered Racialization Shapes Crowdfunding for Women and Girls Murdered by Gun Violence
The financial fallout of American gun violence profoundly impacts both victims and survivors. While employers, insurance companies, and victim compensation programs provide some support for navigating this fallout, many look to private channels—such as crowdfunding—to supplement these often-inadequate resources. We ask: How do those seeking material support on behalf of murdered women and girls assert worthiness and frame claims for restitution in the aftermath of gun violence? On whose behalf is material support requested, and what kinds of support are solicited? Using scholarship on digital sharing economies and the literature on gendered racialization to understand how broader systems of social inequality shape who seeks support and how, we examine GoFundMe crowdfunding campaigns in California and Florida from 2016 through 2018. We find that gendered-racialized strategies of solicitation in campaigns shape how victims are presented as deserving of support. This reinforces a distorted vision of gun violence, with campaigns emphasizing white women and girls as victims through calls for public grief, whereas campaigns for Black and Latinx women and girls frame loss as private trouble.
The Devastating Toll of Gun Violence on American Women and Girls
In many ways, men have historically been the focus of conversations about guns and gun violence in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of gun owners are male.1– endnote– endnote Eighty-six percent of gun deaths in the US involve men, and men are six times more likely to die from gun violence than women.2
Choose to Change: Your Mind, Your Game
Research Brief
Gun violence disproportionately affects youth and young adults living in our city and our country’s most historically under-resourced neighborhoods. The fundamental disparities in basic safety that exist mean that young people growing up in some Chicago neighborhoods are exposed to gun violence at rates almost 30 times higher than their peers just a few miles — or even a few blocks — away. For the children and families living in the communities most affected, consistent exposure to violence and trauma can be detrimental to their mental health, emotional development, and academic engagement.1 While undoing the decades of systemic disinvestment that have created inequity in opportunity will take time, in the immediate term we need to find ways to better support the young people bearing the greatest burdens of violence. Recent research from Chicago and elsewhere suggests providing behavioral and mental health supports can help decrease violence involvement and increase academic engagement.2 These programs, based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles, seek to give young people additional tools to navigate their difficult environments — return a sense of safety, slow down their decision-making processes, and increase their social-emotional skillset. Despite the promise of these approaches, there is a dearth of programming for youth who are no longer consistently attending school and those who are already interacting with the justice system.