FALLING GUN VIOLENCE
Premeditated mass shootings in public places are happening more and more often, some researchers say, plunging towns and cities into grief and riveting the attention of a horrified nation. In general, though, fewer and fewer Americans are dying as a result of gun violence — a shift that began about two decades ago.
In 1993, there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2013, that figure had fallen by nearly half, to 3.6 — a total of11,208 firearm homicides. The rate of shootings that didn’t result in death declined even more precipitously, from 725 in 1993 per 100,000 people to 175 in 2013.
This decline in gun violence is part of an overall decline in violent crime. According to the FBI’s data, the national rate of violent crime has decreased 49 per cent since its apex in 1991. Even as a certain type of mass shooting is apparently becoming more frequent, America has become a much less violent place.
Much of the decline in violence is still unexplained, but researchers have identified several reasons for the shift. Here are five.
1. More police officers
In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed a major crime bill that set aside enough federal funding for law enforcement agencies nationally to add 100,000 officers, though the ranks of the country’s police forces had already been expanding as local governments dedicated more resources to their departments to control increasing rates of crime.
The economist Steven Levitt estimates that larger police forces reduced crime by 5 per cent to 6 per cent. Gun violence, presumably, declined along with crime in general.
2. Police using computers
It wasn’t just that police departments hired more people. They also started using computers to collect data on crime and to direct their officers’ efforts more efficiently.
A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice suggests that computer systems across the country that help identify high-risk neighbourhoods reduced homicide by about 11 per cent.
3. Less booze
About four in 10 prisoners convicted of murder were using alcohol at the time of the offence, according to a federal report. Americans drank 21 per cent less alcohol in 2000 than in 1980, though consumption has increased since then, data from the National Institutes of Health shows. The authors of the report from the Brennan Center believe that this decline can account for 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the overall decline in crime.
4. Less lead
Besides alcohol, lead is another substance that has been shown to make humans more aggressive. Lead is toxic, and it can affect the behaviour of children who are exposed to the metal while their brains are still developing. After the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, refiners were required to sell unleaded gasoline. Jessica Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, has argued that the children born after that law took effect breathed in less lead from car exhaust and that their brains were healthier as a result. She has estimated that the removal of lead reduced violent crime by no less than 56 per cent.
5. A better economy
Unemployment declined sharply from the recession under the Reagan administration through the boom under the Clinton administration, and income for the typical household increased. In better economic circumstances, communities and families might have more resources to dedicate to protecting themselves from crime — for example, by installing alarms in their homes. People also have more opportunities to earn money legally, removing one reason that some break the law.