Gun violence in America: A long list of forgotten victims

ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — Amid the stream of mass shootings that have become chillingly commonplace in America, the reality of the nation's staggering murder rate can often be seen more clearly in the deaths that never make national news.

Take this weekend in Chicago. On Monday, a rooftop shooter opened fire into crowds gathered for an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb, killing at least seven people and wounding some 30.

Less talked about, Chicago Police say 68 people were shot in the city between Friday at 6 p.m. and just before midnight on Monday. Eight of them died.

Most gun violence in America is related to seemingly ordinary disputes that spin out of control and someone goes for a gun. Black people are disproportionately impacted by gun violenc e in America and are much more likely to be the victims of gun crimes or homicides.

Often, the victim and the shooter know one another. They are co-workers and acquaintances, siblings and neighbors. They are killed in farming villages, small towns and crowded cities.

They are people like David Guess, a 51-year-old small-town father of four who had struggled with addiction and who police say was shot by an acquaintance and dumped in an Alabama forest near a place called Chicken Foot Mountain.

His killing drew little attention outside the rural stretch of northern Alabama where Guess grew up and later worked as a mechanic and truck driver. But his death shattered many lives.

“It’s been absolutely devastating” to the Guess family, said his brother, Daniel Guess. Their 72-yearold father, Larry, now rarely leaves his home and often doesn’t get out of bed.

Daniel didn’t just lose his brother in the shooting.

“I’ve lost my dad. too,” he said. “It is killing my dad.”

Compared to much of the developed world, America is a murderous country. The United Nations estimates the U.S. homicide rate is three times that of Canada, five of France, 26 of Japan. According to some studies, there are more guns in America today than there are people.

But if Americans often see the country’s streets as ever more dangerous scenes of public mass killings, the reality is more complicated.

While mass murders soak up the vast majority of the attention, more than half of America’s roughly 45,000 annual firearm deaths are from suicide. Mass shootings — defined as the deaths of four or more people, not including the shooter — have killed from 85 to 175 people each year over the past decade.

Plus, while America’s gun killings spiked wildly in 2020, recent statistics indicate they are coming down this year in many cities.

Further complicating things: The data on firearm killings is woefully incomplete, with just over 60% of the country’s law enforcement agencies reporting crime statistics to the FBI’s national database.

“Our lack of shooting data is devastating for understanding gun violence trends,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, which creates its own crime database to try to get around some of those shortcomings. “This is a government issue, but citizens are forced to develop workarounds” to create a clearer picture of what is happening.

While the FBI collects nationwide crime data, participation is voluntary on the federal level and thousands of law enforcement agencies send nothing or partial information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does a careful count of homicides, but its data on each death is limited.

So when politicians debate whether AR-15-style rifles lead to more killings, or if extended magazines that carry more bullets lead to more deaths, no one is really sure. CDC statistics for 2020, for example, shows that authorities know what kind of weapon was used in just 24% of firearm deaths. Both sides on the gun control debate, meanwhile, can frame what facts there are to suit their purposes.

Across America, people are afraid.

Nearly a third said they can’t go anywhere without worrying about being the victim of a mass shooting, according to 2019 survey by the American Psychological Association. Nearly a quarter said they have changed how they live to avoid mass shootings, sometimes avoiding public events, malls and movie theaters.

But are they afraid of the wrong things?

“The coverage has given people the impression that things are different today, that we’ve never really experienced these (mass killings) before.

But we have. It’s more common now, but it’s still extremely, extremely rare,” given the size of the U.S. population, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University who has been tracking mass killings since 2006 along with The Associated Press and USA Today.

Hyperventilating news coverage has contributed to the fear, he believes, with overwhelming, live coverage of mass shootings and reports that conflate mass shootings — where multiple people are injured — with mass killings. Just 5% of mass shootings end with four or more people dead, he said, “and only a quarter of those are in schools, churches and public places like that.”