No, gun violence is NOT decreasing in the US

[struggle4progress]

Max Ehrenfreund has a sophomoric little piece in today's WaPo, titled The mysterious case of America’s plummeting gun violence

He wants us to focus on the firearm homicide rate. But homicide is a peculiar crime, as it depends somewhat on the victim's subsequent medical history: unless the victim dies, and however badly injured the victim may otherwise be, the crime, whatever else we might call it, is not homicide so long as the victim survives. Improvements in emergency protocols and trauma care therefore reduce the homicide rate generally and the firearm homicide rate in particular

I looked at the fatal and nonfatal WISQARS injury data for 2001-2013 to see what light the data might shed. The rate at which firearms kill Americans seems approximately constant for that period; but the overall injury rate is growing steadily. The rate at which Americans survive gunshot injuries is therefore also growing: the slopes from linear regression analysis suggests the gunshot wound survival rate is increasing by about 2 percentage points a year, while the rate of gun-injury victimization is increasing by 1.5 per 100 000 annually

[randys1]

1. I wonder what Americans aged 18-28 think about owning

guns, and then compare that to older age groups.

This issue will evolve, eventually.

I know, many will die unnecessarily in the meantime.

Culture is a funny thing, you cant create a culture for hundreds of years then overnight say you are making a huge change in it, i get that now.

I would love for all of them to disappear tomorrow, but that isnt going to happen.

[TeddyR]

6. According to an article in the WaPo

Millennials favor Second Amendment rights instead of gun control, which doesn't "bode well" (the Post's quote) for controllers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/millennials-mysterious-support-for-permissive-gun-laws/2015/12/07/5eb9d0c2-9d20-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html

[randys1]

7. Here is the good news

The General Social Survey likewise shows that about 7 in 10 Americans across all age groups favor a law “which would require a person to obtain a police permit before he or she could buy a gun,” according to calculations from my Post colleague Scott Clement.

[TeddyR]

8. I'm fine with that

As long as it is shall issue like a drivers license

[NickB79]

2. You're likely making a couple of mistakes in your analysis

You said you are looking at 2001-2013, while the early 1990's is considered the peak of firearm homicide rates. The 1990's were the time when the largest drop in gun violence occurred, so not including this decade would dramatically skew your results. This would be similar to how climate change deniers look only at 1998, an unusually hot El Nino year, and then say there has been no global warming for the 15 years afterwards.

And, the numbers typically used lump suicides and murders in the same category. Per the Pew Research Center, suicide by gun has indeed been going up for a number of years: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/

By contrast, a significantly higher – and growing – number of gun deaths were by suicide than by homicide, and this has been true throughout the past two decades. For example, while the gun suicide rate has declined overall since 1993, in recent years it has risen, from 6.3 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 6.7 in 2013.

I did find a DailyKos article saying the same thing you are, that also discussed using the WISQARS database here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/14/1169385/-CDC-statistics-show-that-gun-violence-is-not-decreasing

However, even their graphs show that gun homicides have declined markedly since 1993. They took the time to post both suicide and homicide rates, and homicides in 2010 stood at 3.62/100,000 vs 6.75/100,000, mirroring the Pew Research link above. They seem to base their claim that gun violence has not actually declined by using the fact that there are more gun injuries in recent years, not gun homicides. For that to hold water, though, you'd have to believe that, for some strange reason, criminals intent on shooting people are now intentionally shooting to wound vs. shooting to kill, are using weaker firearms, or that they've suddenly become far poorer shots than they used to be. Given the proliferation of fast-firing, high-capacity firearms, that seems unlikely.

My best guess would be that there has been a rise in self-inflicted, accidental gunshot injuries as new shooters buy firearms they aren't familiar with and shoot themselves more often than in decades past while doing stupid shit they saw on TV or video games.

For example, people like this guy:

[struggle4progress]

3. It's my impression in jury data is not available before about 2001

Since none of us believe "criminals intent on shooting people are now intentionally shooting to wound vs. shooting to kill, are using weaker firearms, or .. they've suddenly become far poorer shots than they used to be," the injury data is potentially important, as it allows us to shed a more comprehensive light on the question How many are shot? as opposed to the homicide data which can depend on emergency protocols

[Doc_Technical]

4. Don't forget the musical:

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The improvement in treatment has been pointed out by those in the area

In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence

Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.

"Did everybody become a lousy shot all of a sudden? No," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, a union that represents about 330,000 officers. "The potential for a victim to survive a wound is greater than it was 15 years ago."

In other words, more people in the U.S. are getting shot, but doctors have gotten better at patching them up. Improved medical care doesn't account for the entire decline in homicides but experts say it is a major factor.

Emergency-room physicians who treat victims of gunshot and knife attacks say more people survive because of the spread of hospital trauma centers—which specialize in treating severe injuries—the increased use of helicopters to ferry patients, better training of first-responders and lessons gleaned from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324712504578131360684277812