19th-century American Event Where Gun Violence and Race Were Involved

Am J Public Health. 2017 March; 107(3): 371–373.

Quantifying Disparities in Urbanised Small-arm Violence by Race and Place in Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania: A Cartographical Study

Jessica H. Beard, MD, MPH, Christopher N. Jim Morrison, PhD, Sara F. Jacoby, PhD, MPH, MSN, Beidi Ding, Ph.D., Randi Smith, Mendelevium, MPH, Carrie A. Sims, MD, and Douglas J. Wiebe, PhD

Accepted December 8, 2016.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract

Objectives. To describe variability in the burden of firearm violence by rush, income, and put over in an urban context.

Methods. We used Philadelphia Police Department data from 2013 to 2014 to forecast firearm outrag rates inside census block groups for some victim residence and event locations, stratifying by rush and block group income. We used cartographic modeling to determine variations in relative incidence of firearm assail past speed, neighborhood income, and place.

Results. The overall rate of firearm assault was 5.0 times high (95% self-assurance musical interval [Ci] = 4.5, 5.6) for Unclean people compared with White people. Firearm assault rates were higher among Black people crosswise all victim abode incomes. Relative risk of firearm assault reached 15.8 times high (95% CI = 10.7, 23.2) for Black residents in the highest-income block groups when compared with high-income White individuals. Firearm assault events tended to fall out in ground-hugging-income areas and were massed in several "hot spot" locations with high proportions of Black residents.

Conclusions. Profound disparity in exposure to firearm vehemence aside race and place exists in Philadelphia. Black people were substantially more likely than White masses to sustain firearm set on, regardless of neck of the woods income.

Firearm violence is endemic in the USA.1 On a national level, disparities exist in firearm victimization; adolescent adults, males, and non-Hispanic Black persons are at highest risk for intense piece accidental injury.2 There has been increasing interest in describing factors associated with firearm injury in urban environments. In one of the few published analyses of city-level piece wildness, Walker et alia3 base that Hispanic and not-Hispanic Black people were importantly more apt than White mass to be victims of firearm homicide in Chicago, Illinois. These authors suggested that because race may be a surrogate for income, public wellness interventions should be aimed at alleviating poverty to reduce firearm ferocity in the city.3

The relations between race, socioeconomic status, and place, as they regulate firearm accidental injury risk, are complex. To guide local public health interventions, a greater understanding of how these factors potentiate violent small-arm injury in the cities where firearm violence is most current is needed. Particularly, delineating the unique contributions of airstream, income, and site as correlates of violent piece injury adventure is an important first step in nonindustrial targets for prevention. Therein descriptive medical specialty analysis, we used police data to map the weight down of firearm fury and quantify its variability aside speed up and neighborhood income in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a metropolis with a historically high rate of firearm violence.

METHODS

The Philadelphia Police Section collects someone-level data for every firearm assault in which a person is killed or injured. For this analysis, we accessed records from January 2013 to December 2014 (n = 2175). Usable fields included victim characteristics (sex, geezerhoo, race), event location and human activity address (both masked to city block), and assault eccentric (interpersonal violence, robbery). We geocoded each event location and victim residence and calculated counts of piece assault within the 1336 U.S. Nose count block groups in Philadelphia. Geographical information were on hand for most records; 2149 consequence locations (98.8%) and 2001 victim addresses (92.0%) were geocoded.

We used American Community Survey 5-twelvemonth estimates (2010–2014) to identify the total population, racial composition, and median household income for each block group.4 We measured the mean yearly incidence of firearm assault events and victim residences by block radical, stratifying aside race and income. Then, we created raster layers describing kernel densities of victim residence and small-arm ravish event locations, stratifying the metropolis's population by race and income. At the victim level, we spatially joined block radical characteristics to some the event location and the human activity locations. At the block group level, we used the Pearson χ² test to compare annual rates of dupe residences per 10 000 population accordant to local area income.

RESULTS

Victims were mostly untested (mean age = 28 years; SD = 10 years), Black (82.0%), and male (92.0%). Most injuries resulted from social violence (92.0%), and 18.8% of small-arm assaults were fatal. Firearm assaults were most promising to occur in lower-income block groups (event location median income = $25 125; interquartile range = $18 074–$433 500).

The rate of violent firearm injury was 5.0 multiplication higher (95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.5, 5.6) for Philadelphia's Black population compared with its White population (Table 1). The rate of firearm assaults decreased as abode block mathematical group income increased for every victims. Absolute rates for small-arm violence decreased to near zero for White populations residing in the highest-income areas. Crosswise entirely income levels, all the same, piece assault rates remained high in Blacks. In the highest-income stoppage groups, relative risk of firearm assaults reached 15.8 times higher (95% CI = 10.7, 23.2) for Black residents compared with Flannel residents. Clothed residents of immobilise groups with incomes greater than $60 000 per year had firearm assault rates similar to those of White residents of areas with incomes 'tween $20 001 and $30 000.

TABLE 1—

Firearm Assault Rates and Order Ratios, by Race and Income of Victim Residence Block Chemical group: Philadelphia, Pappa, 2013–2014

	Firearm Outrag in Black People		Firearm Ravishment in White People
Median Menag Income, United States $	No. of Victims	Charge per unita	No. of Victims	Ratea	Firearm Assault in Black vs White People, RR (95% CI)
0–20 000	431	16.1	100	11.7	1.4 (1.1, 1.7)
20 001–30 000	530	13.8	88	6.4	2.2 (1.7, 2.7)
30 001–40 000	394	12.7	54	2.3	5.4 (4.2, 7.0)
40 001–50 000	190	9.4	41	1.9	5.1 (3.7, 6.9)
50 001–60 000	56	6.3	16	0.8	7.9 (4.9, 12.5)
> 60 000	55	7.6	19	0.5	15.8 (10.7, 23.2)
All income levels	1656	12.5	318	2.5	5.0 (4.5, 5.6)

Visual inspection of kernel density maps in Figure A (available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org) suggests that both dupe residence and small-arm assault event locations were found more often in glower-income areas. Case locations tended to concentrate in several "hot spots," whereas human action locations were slightly more dispersed. The racially stratified kernel denseness maps (Estimate A) exemplify how tough firearm injury case locations tended to decoct in areas with higher proportions of Black residents. There appears to be 1 overheated bit of some event location and victim address for firearm violence involving White victims located in an area of the city with a relatively higher proportion of Black residents compared with White residents.

DISCUSSION

Our findings indicate substantial racial, economic, and geographic disparities in rates of firearm violence in Philadelphia. Firearm assaults were concentrated in low-income areas with predominantly Fatal residents. Although living in a high-income area was protective for the population overall, it did not protect Black residents from small-arm violence to the Lapplander degree as White residents. In fact, Total darkness residents of the city's wealthiest block groups had the highest proportionate risk of firearm injury when compared with White residents. Therefore, unlike previous research in Chicago, race does not come out to comprise a surrogate for social science condition in determining bloody small-arm injury risk in Philadelphia.3 Rather, our findings echo those of Kalesan et AL.,5 who found that nationally, Black children were more likely than Gabardine children to comprise hospitalized with firearm injury regardless of neighborhood income level.

The literature supports the estimation that living in a higher-income block grouping in a neighborhood with higher corporate efficaciousness (e.g., social cohesion) mitigates individual firearm assault risk, plane for those at high risk for victimization.6,7 However, Black residents of higher-income areas experienced piece injury at rates similar to throaty-income White residents. Thus, something distinct links racial status and firearm assault risk in our report. Structural factors such atomic number 3 sequestration of Black communities likely contributed to the increased take chances of small-arm furiousness we observed.8–10

This study should be interpreted with its limitations in intellect. First, it included only descriptive analyses and cannot suggest the causative mechanisms by which disparities in firearm violence develop and persist. Moreover, the study was limited to a 2-year period in 1 city and did not include new sociodemographic factors such as ethnicity. However, these analyses puddle several critical contributions. First, we used cartographic modeling to characterize the geographic concentration of firearm violence in an urban linguistic context. The maps (Figure A) and their derived quantified rank ratios support previous conclusions that urban firearm wildness may be second-best understood as occurring at several high-risk locations or hot spots, which represent important targets for place-based force prevention interventions.7,11 Second, although indicators of social disadvantage have been correlated with homicide rates in the main, less is known about their effects on firearm violence specifically. This analysis makes an important first step and is, to our knowledge, the first of its kind to examine the relations between speed up, income, and violent firearm injury incidence within an urban circumstance.

PUBLIC HEALTH IMPLICATIONS

In Philadelphia, race and geography correlate with firearm assault risk in ways that may be independent from other markers of social disadvantage. Although public health programs such A CeaseFire have had some success combating urban violence by addressing bad individuals, the structural factors that result in concentrated disadvantage on racial lines need balanced consideration in the movement to address violent firearm injury in US cities.12 Public health interventions and policies should focus on further understanding and alleviating the structural causes of disparities in photograph to firearm violence to promote wellness fairness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Penn Injury Science Center (CDC R49 CE002474) supported the involvement of C. N. M., S. F. J., and B. D.

The abstract of this article was conferred at the annual American Public Health Association conference; October 29–November 2, 2016; Denver, Colorado.

We would like to thank Kevin Thomas from the City of Brotherly Love Police Section for providing the data.

Hominid PARTICIPANT PROTECTION

The Institutional Review Plug-in of the University of Penn approved this cogitation.

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19th-century American Event Where Gun Violence and Race Were Involved

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296702/

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