This article reports on a study that examined patterns of nonfatal shootings in Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis in order to improve data collection on gun violence and better understand nonfatal shootings, including the spatial and network dimensions of gun violence.
This and other studies have found that nonfatal shootings occur at a ratio of approximately four nonfatal shootings to each fatal shooting, suggesting that data on nonfatal shootings are needed for a comprehensive analysis of gun violence. The findings also highlight the similarities and differences between fatal and nonfatal shootings in terms of victim age, wound severity, and shooting motive. On average, gun homicide victims were about 4 years older than nonfatal shooting victims, and they had more serious gunshot wounds. The data collected also enabled consideration of a number of individual, incident, and community factors linked with nonfatal shootings. Consistently defining, collecting, and analyzing nonfatal shooting data, coupled with gun-related homicide data, enable a comparison of factors related to the severity as well as the frequency of factors in gun violence, whether or not the violence results in the death of the victim. 16 references