Kentuckian: Mass gun violence - data tracking
Too many American school shootings. Too many young people who are the targets - when they are at school or attending outdoor concerts, as in Las Vegas. America is killing our young because we will not regulate the sale and use of guns.
Even worse, while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can count the number of people who develop measles in any given year, the data about gun violence is prevented from being collected. In fact, the National Rifle Association convinced lawmakers to stop collecting statistics on gun violence.
Lexington-Based Website Counts Gun- US Related Deaths
By JOHN CHEVES, The Lexington Herald-LeaderLEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — When gunshots make national news, Mark Bryant's phone rings in Lexington.
Bryant, 62, is neither a law enforcement officer nor a trauma specialist. He runs a private website, Gun Violence Archive (GVA), that updates on an hourly basis, with street-level details, most of the gun-related incidents that have occurred in the United States since 2013.
- How many people have been killed by guns so far this year nationally?
- In your state?
- In your city?
- Last year?
- The year before that?
- The number of people wounded?
- How many shooting victims were children?
- How many mass shootings there were?
- Police-related shootings?
- How many times guns were used in self-defense?
- How many shootings were unintentional?
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| America;s Gun Problem - Huffington Post |
Typically, the FBI under-counts shootings and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under-counts gun deaths because they rely on incomplete reports passed along by local officials and extrapolated surveys. Academic study of gun violence slowed nearly to a halt in 1996 once Congress, at the behest of the National Rifle Association, prohibited federal funding from going to research that could be used to advocate for gun control.
"For firearms, we have rotten, absolutely rotten data," said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
"We have some accounting of the overall number of deaths. But if you want to learn who pulled the trigger or any other circumstances behind the shootings, we collect very little information."
"Compare that to car crashes," Vernick said. "We collect all sorts of information about car crashes. I can tell you not only how many people died in your state last year in car crashes; I can break it down for you by the make and model of the vehicle, the speed it was traveling, the road conditions, the weather, the age and experience of the driver, on and on. But shootings? No. Nothing like that with shootings."
GVA comes closer than most. It has 19 researchers around the country to sweep information about gun-related incidents from the websites of more than 2,000 news organizations and police departments. (One researcher is devoted entirely to the violence-plagued city of Chicago, which can see more than 100 people shot over a single holiday weekend.)
"Compare that to car crashes," Vernick said. "We collect all sorts of information about car crashes. I can tell you not only how many people died in your state last year in car crashes; I can break it down for you by the make and model of the vehicle, the speed it was traveling, the road conditions, the weather, the age and experience of the driver, on and on. But shootings? No. Nothing like that with shootings."
GVA comes closer than most. It has 19 researchers around the country to sweep information about gun-related incidents from the websites of more than 2,000 news organizations and police departments. (One researcher is devoted entirely to the violence-plagued city of Chicago, which can see more than 100 people shot over a single holiday weekend.)
Researchers follow up with phone calls and open records requests to collect more details when necessary.
Incidents are promptly reviewed, categorized and posted on GVA, with one or more links to original sources to confirm their authenticity. There is no commentary; GVA is nonpartisan and takes no position on gun ownership or gun control. It simply provides the numbers.
Last year, according to GVA. there were 384 mass shootings in the United States, adopting the federal government's definition of "four or more people shot and/or killed in a single event." There were 671 children up to age 11 killed or wounded by guns, and 3,124 teenagers up to age 17 killed or wounded. There were 1,971 verified defensive uses of a firearm, which can include either brandishing a gun or shooting it. There were 2,198 unintentional shootings.
Overall, there were 15,063 fatal shootings, continuing an upward trend since GVA began counting, and 30,613 gun-related injuries, also reflecting a steady annual increase. None of those numbers include suicide shootings, which GVA doesn't track.
GVA's data has been cited in hundreds of news stories by scores of news organizations, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, and broadcast and print outlets in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.
"We provide very little analysis, and that's intentional," Bryant said recently. "We want people to be able to draw their own conclusions."
Incidents are promptly reviewed, categorized and posted on GVA, with one or more links to original sources to confirm their authenticity. There is no commentary; GVA is nonpartisan and takes no position on gun ownership or gun control. It simply provides the numbers.
Last year, according to GVA. there were 384 mass shootings in the United States, adopting the federal government's definition of "four or more people shot and/or killed in a single event." There were 671 children up to age 11 killed or wounded by guns, and 3,124 teenagers up to age 17 killed or wounded. There were 1,971 verified defensive uses of a firearm, which can include either brandishing a gun or shooting it. There were 2,198 unintentional shootings.
Overall, there were 15,063 fatal shootings, continuing an upward trend since GVA began counting, and 30,613 gun-related injuries, also reflecting a steady annual increase. None of those numbers include suicide shootings, which GVA doesn't track.
GVA's data has been cited in hundreds of news stories by scores of news organizations, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, and broadcast and print outlets in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.
"We provide very little analysis, and that's intentional," Bryant said recently. "We want people to be able to draw their own conclusions."
Gun violence prevention
On any given day, GVA gets about 20,000 page views.
A major shooting — say, the Orlando nightclub rampage a year ago that left 50 people dead — can spike that to 1.2 million page views a day.
"It comes close to blowing our website apart," Bryant said.
"Mass shootings drive much of the traffic to our website. Children getting shot is second. Familicide (when someone murders the rest of their family) is third in terms of, you know, media interest. But even with those, usually after two days, it's rolled off. You'll hear about these awful shootings for a couple of days, and then they're gone, and nothing more is really said about how we might prevent them from happening the next time."
Although GVA takes no position on guns, Bryant advocates for what he calls "gun violence prevention." He does not oppose gun ownership — in fact, he enjoys target practice when he can find the time — but he says the data confirms a need for mandatory background checks on gun sales and secure gun storage.
Many shootings recorded on GVA were preventable had someone acted more responsibly with their firearm, he said.
"Gun violence prevention is not anti-gun. It's anti-gun violence," Bryant said.
"I equate it in some ways to what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did with drunk driving," he said. "MADD was against the injuries and deaths that occurred due to people driving while drunk. They were not against cars, they were not against car owners, they were not against alcohol. They were simply against the carnage that was occurring from drunk driving."
However, the subject of guns is politically and culturally radioactive, even after the Newtown school massacre, he said.
"I know a lot of guys — friends of mine — who are very smart, rational people on most issues. But when it comes to any kind of legislation about gun safety, all that goes out the window," Bryant said. "They have this visceral reaction that people are trying to take away their guns. Nobody is trying to take away their guns. They're just trying to make things a little bit safer for the rest of us."
Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
"It comes close to blowing our website apart," Bryant said.
"Mass shootings drive much of the traffic to our website. Children getting shot is second. Familicide (when someone murders the rest of their family) is third in terms of, you know, media interest. But even with those, usually after two days, it's rolled off. You'll hear about these awful shootings for a couple of days, and then they're gone, and nothing more is really said about how we might prevent them from happening the next time."
Although GVA takes no position on guns, Bryant advocates for what he calls "gun violence prevention." He does not oppose gun ownership — in fact, he enjoys target practice when he can find the time — but he says the data confirms a need for mandatory background checks on gun sales and secure gun storage.
Many shootings recorded on GVA were preventable had someone acted more responsibly with their firearm, he said.
"Gun violence prevention is not anti-gun. It's anti-gun violence," Bryant said.
"I equate it in some ways to what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did with drunk driving," he said. "MADD was against the injuries and deaths that occurred due to people driving while drunk. They were not against cars, they were not against car owners, they were not against alcohol. They were simply against the carnage that was occurring from drunk driving."
However, the subject of guns is politically and culturally radioactive, even after the Newtown school massacre, he said.
"I know a lot of guys — friends of mine — who are very smart, rational people on most issues. But when it comes to any kind of legislation about gun safety, all that goes out the window," Bryant said. "They have this visceral reaction that people are trying to take away their guns. Nobody is trying to take away their guns. They're just trying to make things a little bit safer for the rest of us."
Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
GVA - http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
Labels: Benton Kentucky, Gun Violence Archives, Lexington Herald Leader, Marshall High School
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