Lethal force, brazen shooters
several cities have seen the death grip tighten. In Chicago, one in 10 people died after being shot in 2000; now one in six perishes.
Last year, the odds for gunshot victims worsened in at least 10 of the nation’s largest cities, The Sun found.
The Baltimore Sun undertook a yearlong investigation into this rarely studied phenomenon, documenting patterns of lethality based on hundreds of crime statistics, hospital data and gun trace reports as well as interviews with police chiefs, homicide detectives, criminologists, medical experts, community activists, victims of gun violence and the perpetrators themselves.
Researchers said lethality is a significant part of the homicide equation, with implications for policing, public health and trauma care, but in-depth study has been hampered by a paucity of statistics.
Historically, gun violence research in the U.S. has been inhibited by a lack of federal funding and data — many police departments only track what they are required to report to the FBI, which doesn’t include how often people survive shootings, where on the body people are shot and how many times.
That leaves a focus on body counts and homicide rates, which can be traced back nearly a century. While the nation’s overall violent crime rate declined, starting in the 1990s, a city’s homicide rate typically fluctuates, sometimes significantly, leaving criminologists to puzzle over the causes behind spikes and dips.
Just five years ago, Baltimore public officials were celebrating a drop in the annual homicide count below 200. This year, that marker was crossed in August.
The latest crime wave in a number of cities — Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee and Washington, to name a few — has prompted deeper soul-searching. Deteriorating police-community relations have been blamed for a sharp increase in shootings and homicides, as have gang conflicts and entrenched societal ills such as segregation, poverty and joblessness.
But one often-overlooked trend has been consistent over the years, the Sun analysis found: Lethal force has become more so.
In Baltimore, where there were nearly 1,000 shootings last year, a one-in-four lethality rate means about 250 victims die. A one-in-three rate means more than 330 people die. So even if shootings subside, the number of gun deaths remains elevated.
On the streets, particularly in poor, black neighborhoods, residents are witnessing increasingly deadly tactics. More shooters are aiming for the head and firing multiple rounds into victims.
The number of fatal head shots in the city rose steadily from about 13 percent two decades ago to 62 percent last year. Meanwhile, the number of cadavers with 10 or more bullets more than doubled in the past decade, according to the Maryland medical examiner’s office, which tallied the bullet wounds at the request of The Sun.
Now, roughly two-thirds of city homicide victims are either shot in the head or multiple times. Many suffer both fates.
Guns have also become more deadly, as the weapon of choice for criminals and then law enforcement shifted from the revolver to the semiautomatic pistol, which can fire more bullets without reloading. Nationally, the number of 9 mm and .40-caliber guns taken off the
Top firearms used in crimes in Baltimore