The Problem with Averages in Understanding
Guns, Violence, and Crime (Take 2)
By David Yamane. March 30th, 2017
When I tell my more liberal friends I am studying "gun culture," they frequently hear me saying "gun violence," since their primary association with guns is with violence. Although my interest in guns is actually in the culture that surrounds it rather than violence, I still spend a few days on "gun violence" -- firearm-related injury and death -- in my Sociology of Guns seminar every semester.
An article we are reading this week - "Firearm Injuries in the United States," published by 4 authors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is interesting to note - shows that the firearm homicide rate in the United States was 3.66 per 100,000 from 2010-2012.
Taking an aggregate statistic like this, we often hear about how much higher the homicide rate is in the United States than other "similar" countries.
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Despite national figures so often being quoted regarding guns and crime, they can never accurately represent the true picture. Instead, it should be obvious that data must to be correlated from geological, ethnic and economic factors and most often tied to cities rather than rural. It is only logical to delve into what might be called ''neighborhood'' levels to obtain figures for gun oriented violence cases, and not paint the entire country with misleading national averages.
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