The murder rate in North Carolina is falling. The same is true nationally. A recent article suggests that shootings are actually up, but deaths are down due to medical advances. At least the first part of that claim is almost certainly wrong. The chart below illustrates the decline in murders. The article in question is this one, from the Wall Street Journal. It is entitled In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence. It argues that the fall in homicides cannot be due to falling overall crime rates because “[t]he reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.” Instead, the article concludes, the decline is due to improved medical care for gunshot victims, including “the spread of hospital trauma centers—which specialize in treating severe injuries—the increased use of helicopters to ferry patients, better training of first-responders and lessons gleaned from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.” I seriously doubt the suggestion that there’s been a 50% increase in shootings since 2001. Aggravated assaults are way down, according to FBI data. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system defines an aggravated assault as an assault “for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury . . . usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by other means likely to produce death or great bodily harm.” Here’s what FBI data show about aggravated assaults. The decline in aggravated assaults pretty closely tracks the decline in murders. It suggests that the reduction [...]
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