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Making the news: Victim characteristics associated with media reporting on firearm injury

ABSTRACT: Firearm injury is a public health crisis in the United States. Selective media coverage may contribute to incomplete public understanding of firearm injury. To better understand how firearm injury is communicated to the public, we analyzed media coverage of intentional, interpersonal shootings in 3 U.S. cities. We hypothesized that multiple shootings and fatal shootings would be more likely to make the news, as would shootings affecting children, women, and white individuals. We compared police department data on shootings to media reports drawn from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) for 2017 in Philadelphia, PA, Rochester, NY, and Cincinnati, OH. GVA reports were matched to police data by shooting date, location, victim age, and gender. Matched victims were compared to unmatched using chi2 tests for categorical variables and Kruskal Wallis tests for continuous variables. Philadelphia police reported 1216 firearm assault victims; Cincinnati police reported 407; and Rochester police reported 178. News reports covered 562 (46.2%), 222 (54.6%), and 116 (65.2%) victims, respectively. Fatal shootings were more often reported as were shootings involving multiple victims or women. Half of shooting victims did not make the news. Selective reporting likely limits awareness of the public health impact of firearm injury. Researchers and policy makers should work with journalists and editors to improve the quantity and content of reporting on firearm injury. Highlights • Researchers and the public turn to the media for information on firearm violence.• Half of all shooting victims were not reported in the news.• Deaths, multiple shootings, women, and children were more often covered by the media.• Comprehensive data on firearm injury is essential.

SUBMITTER: Kaufman E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7533055 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundFirearm purchasing records offer a potentially important administrative data source to identify individuals at elevated risk of perpetrating firearm violence. In this study, we describe individual, firearm, and transaction characteristics of purchasers in California who were arrested for a firearm-related violent crime (FRV) as compared to the general population of registered purchasers in the state.MethodsRelying on a dataset of all individuals with transaction records in California (1996-2021), linked to criminal records (1980-2021), we enrolled a cohort of individuals for whom we could capture the legal firearm purchase history. We identified those arrested for FRV post purchase, and using incidence density sampling, gender-matched cases to ten purchasers (controls) who remained "at risk" at the time the case was arrested. We focused on the purchase closest in time prior to the arrest ("index" purchase). We implemented conditional logistic regression and included models with controls for individual- and community-level demographics, as well as interactions between firearm and purchasing characteristics and criminal history.ResultsThe cohort included 1,212,144 individuals, of whom 6153 were arrested for FRV (0.5%). Cases were matched to 61,530 controls to form the study sample. The largest risk factor was a prior criminal history: purchasers had 5.84 times the risk of FRV if they had a prior arrest within three years of the index purchase (CI 5.44-6.27). Several transaction and firearm characteristics were also associated with FRV. For example, risk increased if the firearm was redeemed at a pawn shop (aIRR: 1.37, CI 1.05-1.77) and decreased if the transaction was a registered private party transfer (vs. retail purchase) (aIRR: 0.83, CI 0.76-0.90) or the firearm was a bolt action firearm (vs. semi-automatic) (aIRR: 0.64, CI 0.51-0.79). In the interaction models, most of the purchase and firearm features only remained significant among those with no criminal history.ConclusionsGiven limited data on firearm transactions, there has been little research on whether the type of firearm an individual purchases or the nature of the purchase might serve as indicators of risk for FRV. We found several transaction and firearm features were associated with risk of FRV. Notably, these features provided little evidence of additional risk for those with a prior criminal record.

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Making the news: Victim characteristics associated with media reporting on firearm injury

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