Gun violence during COVID-19 pandemic: Paradoxical trends in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore
American Journal of Emergency Medicine 39 (2021) 225-226
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Gun violence during COVID-19 pandemic: Paradoxical trends in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore
involved in a gun related incident correlates with the amount of time spent outside of the workplace. Another explanation is that as people with low socioeconomic status become unemployed and experience
tremendous financial stress, they may resort to robbery for income,
which is reflected in the increased robbery rates in NY (22.4%) and Chi- cago (10%) compared to 2019.
COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Orga- nization (WHO). The structure of daily life for most individuals in the United States (US) has changed dramatically. Businesses, schools, and entire industries have been forced to substitute in-person activities for remote/virtual replacements in compliance with recommendations of social distancing from the CDC. This practice has decreased the COVID-19 transmission and is essential to the eventual resolution of this pandemic [1]. As people practice social distancing, the trends of traumatic injuries are changing as well, with fewer vehicle related crashes and injuries as people minimize their driving [2]. Trends in other types of traumatic injury are unclear. In 2017, the number of gun-related injuries/deaths surpassed the number of vehicle related injuries/deaths in the US [3]. We aim to investigate the trends of gun related violence in selected heavily populated US cities during the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss the implications.
We performed a cross-sectional analysis to investigate gun violence in New York City (NY), Chicago, Baltimore and Los Angeles since the be- ginning of the 2020. Data was gathered from the Police Departments (PDs) of each city and from the FBI. Trends were determined by compar- ing gun related incidents/victims/deaths where applicable to 2018 and 2019 to determine what effect, if any, COVID-19 has had on gun violence.
According to the NYPD, as of April 4 there has been 172 shooting incidents which represent an 11.7% increase compared to 2019 and an 18.6% increase compared to 2018 [4]. Similarly, the Baltimore PD reports 180 shooting incidents as of April 4, a 2.0% increase com- pared to 2019 [5]. In Chicago, the PD reports 516 shooting incidents since for 2020, a 23% increase compared to 2019 and a 6% increase compared to 2018 [6]. In contrast, Los Angeles PD reports a 9.3% de- crease compared to 2019 but 10.3% increase compared to 2018 (Fig. 1) [7].
For the heavily populated cities of NY, Chicago and Baltimore, there is a paradoxical trend of increased gun related violence in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We offer several possible explanations.
According to a report from the US Department of Labor, there has been a surge in number of unemployment claims during the pandemic [8]. Many companies are being forced to layoff workers in order to pre- vent financial bankruptcy, while other industries, such as restaurants and entertainment, are simply not open for business. Maryland has re- ceived 298,610 unemployment claims which represents 9.1% of the state’s labor force since March 14, New York State 1,186,994 unemploy- ment claims (12.4% of its’ labor force), and Illinois 634,625 unemploy- ment claims (9.9% of its’ labor force) [8]. With an increasing number of people unemployed, it is possible that the chances of becoming
Another possible explanation for the increased gun violence is the increased sale and consumption of alcohol during this time period. Pre- vious studies have shown that alcohol increases risk-taking behavior and probability of being in an altercation, and committing violent crimes [9]. The increased prevalence of alcohol consumption during the pandemic has prompted the WHO to issue a statement advocating for governments to restrict access to alcohol [10]. The increased sales and consumption of alcohol and the higher rates of unemployment may be a deadly combination that contributes significantly to increased rates of firearm violence.
For the first three months of 2020, the FBI conducted 9,245,857 background checks for firearm purchases, representing a 34.7% increase during this time period in 2019 [11]. A larger amount of guns may in- crease the chance of shootings just by mere prevalence of more guns being present in society and can serve as a contributing factor to the in- creased rates of gun violence.
The main limitation in this analysis is that we only analyzed the trends in gun violence during the January-April 2020 period. This anal- ysis does not capture the trends during the entire pandemic, which is still playing out, however this research can serve as an important obser- vation and a call for further studies, and an opportunity to create longi- tudinal interventions to reduce violence. Additionally reliable data earlier than 2018 was not available for every city evaluated and data for Baltimore in 2018 was also unavailable which prevents analysis of longitudinal trends.
The implications of this data are that social distancing and stay-at- home orders may not decrease the rates of gun violence; in fact, the co- ronavirus pandemic is associated with increased rates. While multiple factors likely influence the rising number of gun incidents, unemploy- ment, increased alcohol consumption, and increased firearm purchases are possible contributing factors. We recommend more thorough data collection and investigation as to what factors are most heavily influenc- ing the higher rates of gun incidents in order to innovate long-term so- lutions to decrease gun related injuries/deaths across the United States and contribute to a safer, healthier society after the resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Funding
None.
Declaration of competing interest
Authors declare no competing interests.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2020.05.006
0735-6757/(C) 2020
226 Gun violence during COVID-19 pandemic: Paradoxical trends in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore
Number of Gun Related Incidents among US Cities, 2018-2020
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
New York
Baltimore
2018 2019 2020
Chicago
Los Angeles
NUMBER OF GUN RELATED INCIDENTS
Fig. 1. Number of gun related incidents from 2018 to 2020 amongst New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It can be observed that Los Angeles has experienced the largest amount of gun incidents in 2020 (N = 567) while New York has experienced the least (N = 172). 2018 was not available for Baltimore.
References
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- Alcohol does not protect against COVID-19; access should be restricted during lock- down. World Health Organization. . http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/ disease-prevention/alcohol-use/news/news/2020/04/alcohol-does-not-protect- against-covid-19-access-should-be-restricted-during-lockdown/_recache?fbclid=
IwAR2lkIQcxfDdziOa7esAbXO-caLv66wvhmP4JxoDwXQd5z14X02jAmHZulg& mod=article_inline. Published April 14, 2020. Accessed April 16, 2020.
NICS firearm checks: month/year. FBI. . https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nics_
firearm_checks_-_month_year.pdf/view. Published April 2020. Accessed April 16, 2020.
Mason Sutherland
Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care,
Kendall Regional Medical Center, Miami, FL, USA
Mark McKenney
Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care,
Kendall Regional Medical Center, Miami, FL, USA University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
Adel Elkbuli
Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care,
Kendall Regional Medical Center, Miami, FL, USA
?Corresponding author at: 11750 Bird Road, Miami, FL 33175, USA
E-mail address: Adel.Elkbuli@hcahealthcare.com
17 April 2020