The CDC’s Homicide-Firearms Data Creates A Firestorm Of Media Misinformation

Highlights

Why are firearms the key or only element of crime discussions? Are there an array of issues we are ignoring?

Why does the media ignore the massive loss of cops (14,000), declining police proactivity, plummeting arrests and correctional numbers, and massive offender recidivism when discussing violence?

The overwhelming majority of violence doesn’t involve firearms. When it does, most violence is committed with hundreds of millions of Constitutionally-protected handguns. If the overwhelming majority of firearms are protected, why are they the principal focus?

Author

Opinion

Shocking. The media has discovered through new data from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that firearm-related homicides have increased exponentially. The only problem is that there’s nothing from the CDC that we didn’t already know.

The FBI reported in 2020 (the latest available data) that the number of homicides (mostly firearm-related) increased nearly 30% from 2019, the largest single-year increase the agency has recorded since it began tracking these crimes in the 1960s. There were more than 21,500 murders last year, a total not seen since the mid-1990s. In 2020, violent crime was up 5.6 percent from the 2019 number. The estimated number of aggravated assault offenses rose 12.1 percent.

The data below (and the chart above) from the Centers For Disease Control shows an almost steady increase in firearm-related homicides since 2014. Firearms were involved in 79% of all homicides.

Pundits from around the country are in an uproar blaming everything from private gun ownership, COVID, racism, and social conditions. It’s like someone told the media that violent crime is up for the first time.

The increase in violence is suddenly new information because the focus is on firearms?

Examples Of Media Coverage

From The Marshall Project: “A historical increase” in gun deaths in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Gun-related homicides rose by 35% since 2019, the Centers for Disease Control reported on Tuesday. More than 45,000 Americans died from guns in 2020 and more than half of those were gun deaths from suicides, The New York Times. Gun murders rose to their highest level in 28 years. “It’s significant and devastating; we cannot turn away from it,” said Dr. Debra Houry of the CDC, The Wall Street Journal.

From Reason: The New York Times Uses a CDC Report on Homicides As an Excuse To Attack Private Gun Ownership. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday issued a report on the recent surge in the U.S. gun homicide rate, which rose by a third between 2019 and 2020, from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 residents. The article, which was published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, notes that “several explanations have been proposed,  including “increased stressors (e.g., economic, social, and psychological) and disruptions in health, social, and emergency services, Reason.

From NBC News: From 2019 to 2020, firearm homicide rates increased by almost 35 percent, the highest level recorded in over 25 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Simon said firearm homicides increased across all age groups and genders, and across the country, in both urban and rural areas, especially in counties with higher levels of poverty. The largest increase in firearm homicides was among Black people, Simon said, adding that the rate among young Black men and boys, aged 10 to 24, was more than 21 times as high as the rate of young white men and boys in the same age group in 2020, NBC News.

First, The CDC’s Data Mimics What We Already Know

The CDC’s trend line mimics homicide data from the FBI (crimes reported to law enforcement-see below). It includes all homicides regardless of the weapon.

I also included FBI data on overall violent crime over time.

Per all three charts, the growth in homicides and violent crime began in 2014-2015. It levels off around 2016-2018, and skyrockets from 2019 to 2020.

There’s nothing in the CDC data that we didn’t already know.

FBI-Violent Crime Over Time

CDC Report (most data on suicides was excluded for brevity)

New analysis shows firearm homicide rates grew nearly 35% from 2019 to 2020, with disparities by race/ethnicity and poverty level widening, and firearm suicide rates remaining high.

Firearms were involved in 79% of all homicides in 2020. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a historic increase of 35% in the firearm homicide rate, resulting in the highest firearm homicide rate in more than 25 years. This, along with increases in firearm suicide rates for some groups, has widened racial, ethnic, and other disparities, according to a new CDC Vital Signs analysis.

Firearm homicide rates are consistently highest among males, adolescents, young adults, and non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people. In 2020, firearm homicide rates increased across all age groups, with the highest rates and increases observed among those 10–44 years old. Considering age, sex, and race/ethnicity simultaneously, the largest increases in firearm homicide rates were among non-Hispanic Black males 10–44 years old.

Among the key findings for firearm homicides:

• Rates increased for both males and females, but more notably among males.
• The highest rates and increases occurred among non-Hispanic Black persons.
• Rates increased across the country in large and small metro areas, as well as non-metro and rural areas.
• Rates were higher and showed larger increases in counties with higher poverty levels.

Long-standing systemic inequities and structural racism may contribute to unfair and avoidable health disparities among some racial and ethnic groups.

“The tragic and historic increase in firearm homicide and the persistently high rates of firearm suicide underscore the urgent need for action to reduce firearm-related injuries and deaths,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., M.P.H. “By addressing factors contributing to homicide and suicide and providing support to communities, we can help stop violence now and in the future.”

Source

Centers For Disease Control

Conclusions

There are endless numbers of media reports (per a Google news search) regarding the CDC’s new report because of the connection to firearms.

How is this news? We’ve been using data from the FBI for many years and they say the same thing. In fact, a recent report on gun violence from the Bureau of Justice Statistics was almost ignored by the media, and it’s far more comprehensive than the CDC’s report.

It states that from 1993 to 2018, an annual average of 8% of all fatal and nonfatal violence involved a firearm. On average, 71% of homicides were committed with a firearm. During the same period, an annual average of 22% of nonfatal violence, excluding simple assault (editors note: simple assaults are the majority of violence), involved a firearm, including 23% of robberies and 27% of aggravated assaults. If you included simple assaults, the percentages would be much lower.

Yet the report was almost ignored. Was it because the vast majority of violent crime does not involve firearms? Is the message that it has to be firearm-related to get extensive news coverage?

Polls vary on the number of firearms in private hands in the United States. The estimates range from 350 to 400 million with the vast majority being Constitutionally protected handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. “Controlling” private firearms is a daunting challenge considering the vast majority of gun violence involves handguns (including mass shootings), not commonly discussed assault weapons. Even if handguns were banned (impossible because of Constitutional and court protections) it would take a lifetime for prohibitions to be effective.

But the other media explanations for the CDC’s rise in firearm violence, (private gun ownership, COVID, racism, the economy, and social conditions) ignores the timing (2014-2015) of massive riots (costing over two billion dollars in insurance claims) regarding police use of force. Criminology is filled with references to riots having decades-long implications for crime. COVID is used as a correlate when the rise in homicides and violence began in 2014-2015, years before COVID made its 2020 appearance.

Violence and serious violence increased 28 percent after 2015 per the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The media ignores the considerable loss of police officers, the lack of police proactivity (per data, the only modality that has a research base indicating that it reduces crime), plummeting arrests, massive criminal reoffending (recidivism), and vastly reduced and record-setting correctional numbers. No one mentions child abuse, mental illness, PTSD, brain damage, or substance use among the offender population.

But if guns are front and center, the media’s appetite increases exponentially.

The lesson is that the vast majority of violent crime doesn’t involve firearms, the vast majority of violent crime and mass shootings that involve firearms include Constitutionally protected handguns, and that the increase in violence is probably related to massive protests that created a significant loss of approximately  14,000 cops, a fear of police proactivity, the subsequent-considerable loss in arrests, record-setting reductions in correctional numbers and massive offender recidivism (rearrests exceed 80 percent).

I have no issues with reasonable and Constitutional restrictions on firearm ownership and use. If it was up to me, the purchase of every firearm would require a background check. We don’t allow people to possess ghost guns, fully armed F16s or bazookas or chemical weapons. There are acceptable restrictions.

But if the focus is solely on firearms, the media and others who take that stance are doing a grave disservice to discussions on growing violence and record fear of crime. 400 million firearms are not going to disappear overnight-they are not going to disappear at all. When a politician blames gun violence for our problems, it’s an admittance that she doesn’t know the real reasons for increasing crime.

We need to look elsewhere for solutions or we will never fully address the violence that is destroying our cities and our fellow citizens. It’s also obvious that reporters need to understand crime and violence better.

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