Risk Perception

We've discussed this here a few times, but it never gets old. Yes, the U.S. has far higher rates of gun violence and gun deaths than other affluent countries, and most countries in general. (There is more gun violence in some Central and South American countries, however, where civic order has broken down.)

However, media attention and political discourse focuses almost entirely on incidents in which a lot of people are killed at once, which is quite misleading with respect to the actual risks posed by firearms. Also, while there seems to be constant hysteria about violent crime in the U.S., it is not actually high by historic standards although, again, it is certainly higher than in comparable countries. Here's some straight dope from the Pew Research Center.

You'll notice a couple of things, I hope. The first is that the murder rate tends to bounce around quite a lot, for unclear reasons, but it isn't high by historical standards. If you were to eliminate the uptick in 2020, it would seem low, actually. The second thing is that there are consistently more suicides than homicides. If you keep a gun in the house for "protection," by far the most likely use for it will be to kill yourself or a family member.

Also very noteworthy, there are huge differences among the states.

The states with the highest rates of gun deaths consistently vote Republican, although some Republican leaning states -- Texas and Florida -- have relatively low rates. Nevertheless, if you painted the states red and blue instead of dark brown and tan, this would look a lot like the electoral college map. Just sayin'.

But, the main point for today is that mass shootings, however defined, make up a small percentage of the total. There were slightly less than 20,000 gun murders in the U.S. in 2020, which was a big number by historical standards although not so much adjusting for population size. The most expansive definition of a mass shooting event is one in which 4 or more people are shot, even if none of them dies. By that definition, there were 512 deaths in 2020, a little over 2.5% of the total. So why do they get all the attention?

The way people perceive risk intuitively is not consistent with mathematical risk. "Catastrophic" events, in which large numbers of people are injured or killed at once, are far more noticeable and create far more fear. People also don't perceive risk when they think they're in control..For example, driving a car is much more dangerous than riding in an airplane, but people don't feel danger when they drive. So they don't feel danger keeping a gun in the house. 

To be sure, however, these events will get noticed, they will get a lot of attention, they will traumatize entire communities. So yeah, we should try to put a stop to this, and to all of the less noticed violence as well.