We Need To Know More About Gun Violence, Not Less.

If my friends at The Trace want to continue describing their work as ‘Investigating gun violence in America,’ the least they could do is get their facts straight, or better yet, take the trouble to figure out whether what they say is really based on reliable facts.

I have just finished reading a long and detailed article they published on March 27, which purports to explain how gun violence is not only increasing every year, but is also much more frequent in smaller cities and rural towns than it used to be.

This article is based on data published by the Gun Violence Archive, (GVA) which now runs the gun violence numbers through 2023. And since the CDC gives us shooting numbers through 2021 and the FBI has published its complete findings only through 2019, obviously the GVA gives us a more current view of things, right?

Wrong. And the reason it’s wrong is because the GVA makes no bones about the fact that its database is comprised completely from open-media sources which tends to overstate certain types of violence and understate others.

Did the three staffers from The Trace bother to explain how it is that the GVA numbers for intentional shootings of one individual (or multiple individuals) by another individual are pretty close for fatal shootings but are off for non-fatal…