In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence

[SecularMotion]

Last edited Sat Dec 8, 2012, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

BALTIMORE—The number of U.S. homicides has been falling for two decades, but America has become no less violent.

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.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=2&ved=0CC4QqQIoADAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324712504578131360684277812.html&ei=BGnDUIGFIdGA0AGImYGABA&usg=AFQjCNF8Yw5p2Eikv8bKDsQVzZ8y1sOPWQ&cad=rja

Edit:changed link to Google news

[gejohnston]

1. I'm not going to subscribe to WSJ to read the whole article

so, I have no idea who wrote it or what his or her sources are.
But it seems that all violent crime has been dropping, so I doubt the writer's claim.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate-at-lowest-point-in-decades.-Why-America-is-safer-now

[SecularMotion]

2. Strange, I read the article without a subscription when I posted the link

Now I can't access the full article.

[petronius]

4. I couldn't read it either, but on the front page it's now labelled as "subscriber content"

Maybe they leave things open for a short period of time as a teaser, or switch them to "buy only" after a certain number of hits - get people talking, then slam the door...

[rDigital]

11. It's probably a paywall that goes up after you read a few articles. : ( nt

[petronius]

3. That's the part I've always wondered about - these attempted murders should be showing

up as a spike in the next crime down the chain (aggravated assault?), but they're not. So if there's really an increase in shooting crimes, where are the charges and crime reports? Of course it's possible that all crime rates are dropping, but there's just been a massive shift in weapons choice toward firearms - the data must be available as well.

I wonder if the relevant improvement in medical is not actually in survivability (although that's certainly occurring), but rather in transportation and response: more people are actually getting to the hospital in time to be treated...

[PavePusher]

5. Are they discussing per capita rates, or merely the total number? n/t

[PavePusher]

6. O.K., no subscription wall for me, so here's a few points from the article:

The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.

No hard numbers given, so hard to judge what they mean by "nearly half". These kinds of reports are often noteable for the... ummm... "generosity"... in their rounding methods. No data, no good conclusions. They also do not put forth any of a number of other stats such as the actual per capita rates.... hmmmm.....

After a steady decline through the 1990s, the annual number of homicides zigzagged before resuming a decline in 2007, falling from 16,929 that year to an estimated 14,722 in 2010, according to FBI crime data.

At the same time, medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period.

And again no per capita rates....

"Our experience is we are saving many more people we didn't save even 10 years ago," said C. William Schwab, director of the Firearm and Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the professor of surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Driving the advances in treatment is a symbiotic relationship between trauma centers and military medicine. Military doctors honed the use of blood banks and helicopter transport during the Korean and Vietnam wars, said Thomas Scalea, Physician-in-Chief at the R Adams Cowley trauma center in Baltimore.

Civilian doctors made advances in the treatment of gunshot wounds during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when U.S. homicides peaked. They learned that patients were more likely to survive if doctors first stabilized them and then treated one injury at a time, Dr. Scalea said. That allowed the patient to recover between operations.

Methods were refined by the military over the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. War doctors learned how to better deal with blood loss, a major cause of death from such injuries.

This is really nothing new. Similar medical advancements occured during all wars in American history.

Mortality rates of gunshot victims, meanwhile, have fallen, according to research performed for The Wall Street Journal by the Howard-Hopkins Surgical Outcomes Research Center, a joint venture between Howard University and Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, 13.96% of U.S. shooting victims died, almost two percentage points lower than in 2007. (Earlier data used different standards, making comparisons useless.)

Interesting admission. Which makes it all the more difficult to draw any firm conclusions.

Good article, but about the only firm statement that can be made is that medical treatment is getting better.

[wendylaroux]

7. So all of the shootings

are giving doctors lots of practice in gunshot wound care. yea!/yea?.

[Clames]

8. Misleading title for OP.

Gun violence rates peaked more than 15 years ago and have fallen off considerably. Violent crime overall is at a near 20 year low. No facts to support the claims in the article means it is basically a worthless skreed outside of the fact that medical care has improved which isn't exactly big news.

[Starboard Tack]

9. Right! And the earth is flat too!

[Clames]

13. You believing that fits in perfectly with your other arguments.

[hack89]

10. Riddle me this then

when you shoot someone and they live the crime is aggravated assault. Aggravated assaults are down along with every other type of violent crime. How is this possible if more people are getting shot but surviving due to advances in medicine?

[spin]

12. Good point. (n/t)

[DanTex]

17. This is because not all aggravated assaults involve guns.

[hack89]

19. This entire situation is as clear as mud

Criminologists say they are cautious about using such medical statistics to draw conclusions because of year-to-year inconsistencies in the number of medical institutions reporting data. The FBI collects annual homicide and aggravated assault statistics but doesn't have reliable numbers for gun and knife attacks.

Jens Ludwig, a law professor and the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said he was leery of any number beyond reported homicides.

"Homicide is the one thing we're measuring well," he said. "Everything else is subject to much more uncertainty," including varying numbers of emergency departments contributing data, as well as differences in how injuries are classified.

No studies have quantified the relationship between emergency medicine and the recent decline in homicides.

In any case, reduction in deaths is always cause for celebration.

[DanTex]

23. The one thing that is crystal clear is that the NRA bots will believe anything...

as long as it supports the ideology.

It's also funny that all of a sudden you seem to believe in the need for actual scientific studies, as opposed to just drawing conclusions from raw data. It is true that we can't necessarily attribute all of the differential between gun assault and gun homicide rates to emergency medicine. Jens Ludwig is right. Of course, there's something else that Jens Ludwig is also right about...

This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence on homicide rates, and infers the marginal external cost of handgun ownership. The estimates utilize a superior proxy for gun prevalence, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, which we validate. Using county- and state-level panels for 20 years, we estimate the elasticity of homicide with respect to gun prevalence as between +0.1 and + 0.3. All of the effect of gun prevalence is on gun homicide rates. Under certain reasonable assumptions, the average annual marginal social cost of household gun ownership is in the range $100 to $1800.

http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JPubE_guns_2006FINAL.pdf

Wait, lemme guess. When Jens Ludwig points out that measurements of gun assaults are subject to uncertainty, he's right, but when he demonstrates a positive link between gun ownership and homicide, he's some a biased gun-grabbing ivory tower elitist. Did I get that right?



You better be careful! Once you stray from the loony gun blogs and NRA talking points into the realm of legitimate social science, the pro-gun ideology becomes very difficult to defend!

[hack89]

25. They use a data set that perfectly staddles a historic high in gun violence

due to the crack epidemic and is biased towards large urban counties (96% of counties in data set). From that they determine that gun availability influences homicide rates.

Well no shit - cities are where the violence was and still is concentrated due to economic and culture issues like drugs, poverty, gangs, unemployment and despair. Then they point out that it is not legal gun owners who are the problem but criminals - again no shit.

This is my take away:

Finally, Table 5 provides suggestive evidence that gun prevalence leads to elevated rates of homicide through the transfer of guns from legal to illegal owners, rather than through increased gun misuse by otherwise legal owners. In this exercise, we focus on homicide rates to victims 15 to 19, a relatively high percentage of whom are killed in gang- and felony-related attacks by youthful criminals.

As many of us have said all along, looks like you have a violent criminal problem to solve. Let us know how it goes.

[DanTex]

26. LOL. I love it when scientifically ignorant pro-gunners take on the peer reviewed research.

Proving again that gun fanatics will say or believe anything to defend their ideology. It is plainly obvious that you don't understand one word of this study, and yet you are absolutely convinced that it must be somehow flawed.

I guess you didn't figure this out, but that study examined rates of gun ownership and homicide at a county-by-county level. The conclusions are not based on national trends, but on the differences between counties. Also, the study was controlled for various confounding factors, including, for example, percentage of urban residents in a county.

And you also missed the fact that the finding was that overall civilian gun ownership rates overall were linked to higher gun ownership rates. This is because in the real world, as opposed to the NRA bubble, people don't see the world in idiotic black-and-white good-guys-versus-criminals way, but understand that law abiding citizens can become criminals, that criminal acquire guns from law abiding citizens, etc.

Anyway, the data doesn't lie. Gun ownership rates positively affect homicide rates.

[hack89]

27. 96% percent of the counties were populous urban counties.

don't you think they have some unique social, economic and cultural characteristics? Like gangs, poverty and crime?

Nope - you have a violent criminal problem.


So 14 years later we have historically low murder rates. From 1985 to 2004 suicide rates fell 13% - they have held steady since.

So using their methodology, the social cost of guns has been steadily declining over the past decade.

Sounds good to me.

[DanTex]

28. Not sure where you got that number.

Also not sure what point you are trying to make -- their sample covered the 200 most populous counties, which accounted for 74% of homicides, and they controlled for urbanicity. Like I said, you obviously don't understand the study at all, because their methodology does not in any way imply that the social cost of guns has beens steadily declining over the past decade.

Strange thing about NRA people like you is that you don't even seem to bother to try and understand things before repeating your talking points.

[hack89]

29. Sorry -it was 92.6 %.

Table 1.

If the two factors use were homicide rate and gun availability (measured by gun suicides) and both homicide rates and suicide rates are lower than it would seem logical that the overall social cost of gun violence is falling. And if homicide rates are falling faster than suicide rates (which is true) then the social cost of each death has also fallen.

That study specifically said that the increased in homicide rates were due to illegal gun owners. I love how grabbers always want to lump legal gun owners in with criminals. I am not a pre-criminal regardless of how desperately you want to paint me with that broadbrush.

Go take care of the criminals.

[DanTex]

31. You really have no clue what is going on in that study.

Why is it that NRAers with zero knowledge of statistics or social sciences always pretend like they not only understand but also have somehow debunked all the scientific studies? That is the question.

[hack89]

32. Appears I know more about it than you do

considering you can't address my points. You do understand how they calculated the number of guns don't you?

There are good reasons gun control is a smoking ruin in America - people like you are one of them.

[DanTex]

33. Do you understand the results are based on county-by-county analysis and not national trends?

Do you understand how correlations are calculated? Do you understand anything at all about statistics?

Do you think that the fact that you are so sure of your conclusions, despite not knowing anything at all about the methodology, is a sign that maybe you are driven by ideology and not by facts?

[hack89]

34. Yes

are you arguing that major urban areas have not seen significant drops in gun violence in the past 30 years? Fewer deaths and more guns - has to change the math don't you think? Or are you saying that there has also been a significant drop in guns available to criminals in urban areas?

The big picture is pretty simple - fewer gun deaths. And most of the remainder are due to criminals.

[DanTex]

35. Umm, actually no you don't.

Because all of your posts are about national trends, but unless you have looked at county-by-county data in the last few years and replicated the study, you have no idea whether or not the social costs as measured by the study have increased or decreased.

Is this really that complicated? Why are you pretending to understand things that you don't understand?

[hack89]

36. But in aggregate those counties experienced a significant decrease in homicides.

that is a given. Don't forget their data was cherry picked to show a historic high in gun deaths. If those counties accounted for 73% of murders then logic dictates that they experienced a decrease in murders.

I don't have to look at each county if in aggregate they represent such a significant portion of murders in 1990.

Significantly fewer murders. What would drive the cost of each death up?

[DanTex]

37. Again, you can't replicate county-by-county analysis based on aggregate data.

Trust me, if you can't understand that, you really don't understand anything about this study. Yes, you do need to look county-by-county. If not, the authors of the study wouldn't have bothered to do that. The national trend only gives you one datapoint.

Also, the data was not cherry-picked -- they looked at the 200 largest counties by population. But keep telling yourself "the studies are all biased"...

[hack89]

38. You have lost track of the big picture

the dates of their data was picked to include an historical peak in gun violence - homicide rates have been slashed nearly 50% since then.

Now if you want to believe that portions of America still have 1992 levels of violence then knock yourself out. It does not do anything for your credibility.

I understand that gun deaths represent a cost to society. The difference is you place the blame on the gun. I blame the criminals - just like your study did.

You have never been safer. Your study does not change that fundamental fact.

[DanTex]

39. Umm, once again, you can't replicate a county-by-county study based on the "big picture".

Do you really not get that? The whole point of looking at county-by-county data is to isolate the effect of gun ownership and control for other factors and national trends.

The fact that gun homicide rates are lower than 1992 is entirely besides the point. There are (obviously) other factors besides gun ownership, including, for example, emergency medicine. To isolate the effect of gun ownership, you need to look at the data at a more detailed level. Like they did in this study.

Do you ever wonder why you are always fighting against the scientific evidence, why you keep having to find excuses why the peer reviewed studies are "flawed" or "biased". Do you really think it's all an ivory tower conspiracy to take away your guns?

[hack89]

40. Considering it was funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation

it's impartiality certainly can be questioned. They are the mirror image of the NRA - would you accept a NRA study?

I just fail to see how it is relevant to the issue of gun violence. The issue is not that gun violence extracts a price on society, it is how we address the issue. That study is basically saying that even though legal gun owners are not actually committing these murders they have to pay (in fees) for the social cost of guns because we can't get the actual criminals to pay.

Now if that is your message to the gun owners of America then I wish you luck.

[DanTex]

41. LOL. And there it is!

Finally, you realize that you in way over your head trying to argue the substance and so instead you try to attack the authors. Hey, whatever it takes to keep believing the NRA propaganda, right? You can't find a flaw in the statistics, so you play the "bias" card.

I guess you must have forgotten that the reason I chose this specific study is that it is authored by Jens Ludwig, the same social scientists that was quoted in that article. You know, the guy that you thought was credible when you thought it suited your political agenda...

You are tying yourself in knots with your denialism. Why not just accept reality?

[hack89]

42. I am willing to accept that it is a good study

I just fail to see what it has to tell us about gun control.

As I said, the issue is not that gun violence extracts a price on society, it is how we address the issue. That study is basically saying that even though legal gun owners are not actually committing these murders they have to pay (in fees) for the social cost of guns because we can't get the actual criminals to pay.

Now if that is your message to the gun owners of America then I wish you luck.

[DanTex]

44. But you obviously missed the point of it completely.

The point is not that gun violence extracts a price. It is that gun ownership has a social cost, in the form of increased gun violence.

Anyway, I've repeated this all enough times for tonight I think. If you still don't get it, you never will...

[hack89]

45. Yes - gun violence by criminals

it was very clear in the study. I am not disagreeing with you about that.

[hack89]

43. Does this mean Ludwig was right about emergency medicine? nt

[RamRoddoc]

14. Where is the money?

I agree overall advances in medical care and trauma teams have increased survivability for what were once unsalvageable patients.

However, I question the source and the added shooting "homicide" rate dropping and "attack" rising bears scrutiny. First who funded the research and the funded departments (indirectly or directly) that worked on this joint endeavor?

Second how are the two "separate" research groups related.

Third who collected the data and was it accurate and does it represent what it seems to.

One could say that as more guns become legally available more shootings (attacks) will occur. However if you include "attacks" as police shooting or private citizens shooting criminals worthy of such an attack then shame on you for distorting truth to serve a purpose. I make mention of this because the wording was changed from "homicide" to "attack". There are good and bad attacks that exist dependent on how you interpret an attack.

One could even state that as more legal guns are present more criminal risk getting shot but we have better medical care. I'm fine with that but separate it and state it so.

I guess I question the source of the report. John Hopkins, whose public health department is actually called "The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health" Former Mayor Bloomberg of MAIG is a strong and well-funded proponent of severely strict gun control and gun bans (handguns) even within the home. The Joyce foundation supports MAIG, VPC and gives millions of dollars in support to anti-gun groups and funds higher learning departs such as those for public health and law.

Now that won't influence Howard in this joint report, right? Howard merged with John Hopkins in 1998 and at that time accepted to assume the Hospital's debt of approximately $57 million and accept:
To fund the Hospital's 5-year Strategic Plan of about $25 million
To fund the Hospital's 5-year capital replacement plan of about $20 million
To fund a new private, non-profit foundation with approximately $40 million

I would hope this report is subjected to strong unbiased review as would any other medical report. However that's not required when education is in the form of a New Paper article.
[link:http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/academics/schools/bloomberg_school_of_public_health/|

[link:http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/1998/MARCH/howard.html|

]

[Lizzie Poppet]

15. Stab wounds are climbing faster...

Quick! Wring your hands and screech for knife control...

[Atypical Liberal]

16. Except gun violence is not "soaring".

Violent crime has been in decline for decades. I believe there was a slight up-tick this year, but we are at 1960's levels of violent crime. Homicides or otherwise.

[DanTex]

18. Not all violent crimes are gun crimes.

Last edited Wed Dec 12, 2012, 07:51 PM - Edit history (1)

Violent crime declined a lot in the 90s and a little in the 2000s. But violent crime includes more than gun crimes, so it is entirely possible that shootings have increased while overall violent crimes have decreased. I can't access the article, so I don't know what it says exactly.

[Atypical Liberal]

22. You may be right.

According to WISQARS, the crude rate of firearm assault injury has increased since 2001, though homicide has decreased since 1999.

The decline in death may be due to better medical technology and increased prevalence of cell phones.

[DanTex]

24. Comment about those charts.

The scales used greatly exaggerates the extent of the decline of gun homicides versus the increase in gun assaults. That's because the y-axis of chart for assaults goes down to 0 and for gun homicides it doesn't. In reality, the gun assault rate has gone up from about 14.5 to about 18, an increase of about 25%, whereas gun homicides dropped from 3.9 to 3.6, which is a decrease of about 8%

In any case, yes, you are right, it is not for certain that the difference is due to improved medicine, though it is very likely responsible for at least part of it.

[Atypical Liberal]

30. I just let Calc do it automatically.

I was not looking for scale but trend.

[DanTex]

20. According to the CDC, the story checks out.

Rates of firearm assault injuries have increased over the 2000s

Year Number of
injuries Population Crude
Rate Age-Adjusted
Rate**
2001 41,044 284,968,955 14.40 14.11
2002 37,321 287,625,193 12.98 12.75
2003 42,505 290,107,933 14.65 14.40
2004 43,592 292,805,298 14.89 14.72
2005 50,320 295,516,599 17.03 16.92
2006 52,748 298,379,912 17.68 17.45
2007 48,676* 301,231,207 16.16 16.09
2008 56,626 304,093,966 18.62 18.57
2009 44,466 306,771,529 14.49 14.50
2010 53,738 308,745,538 17.41 17.55
2011 55,544 311,591,917 17.83 17.85

Rates of firearm homicide have declined slightly.

Year Number of
Deaths Population*** Crude
Rate Age-Adjusted
Rate**
2001 11,348 284,968,955 3.98 3.93
2002 11,829 287,625,193 4.11 4.07
2003 11,920 290,107,933 4.11 4.07
2004 11,624 292,805,298 3.97 3.94
2005 12,352 295,516,599 4.18 4.17
2006 12,791 298,379,912 4.29 4.27
2007 12,632 301,231,207 4.19 4.20
2008 12,179 304,093,966 4.01 4.03
2009 11,493 306,771,529 3.75 3.78
2010 11,078 308,745,538 3.59 3.62