The Morning: Beyond mass shootings

July 8, 2022

Today's newsletter continues our occasional series on the causes of America's unique problem with gun violence and the potential solutions. — David Leonhardt

By German Lopez and Ashley Wu

Good morning. We look at where most of America's gun violence happens.

Everyday violence

Since a gunman killed seven people at a Chicago suburb's July 4 parade, more than 160 people have died from other gun homicides across the country. In Chicago alone, at least 10 people were killed in multiple shootings during the holiday weekend.

These everyday killings received far less attention than the mass murder at the parade. But they are the standard for American gun violence: More than 95 percent of gun homicides this year have been shootings with one to three victims.

Today, we want to help you understand where and why most everyday gun violence happens. We're going to focus on Chicago, because it has one of the country's highest murder rates and because a local group — the University of Chicago Crime Lab — keeps detailed data. But the trends in Chicago are also present in many other places.

One crucial point is that violence tends to be highly concentrated: A small sliver of blocks — just 4 percent in Chicago, for example — can account for a majority of shootings in a city or a county.

Many of the people in these blocks live in terror. The sound of gunshots is common, sometimes coming multiple times a day. Parents worry that their kids could be next, and young people fear for their own lives. As Jomarria Vaughn, a 24-year-old Chicagoan, told this newsletter: "I'm scared. I have my guard up all day."

This map of shootings in Chicago shows the concentration. Shootings are rare in much of the city, particularly on the wealthier North Side, but not on the poorer West and South Sides.

Source: University of Chicago Crime Lab

This concentration is not exclusive to Chicago. Across the U.S., neighborhoods that contained just 1.5 percent of the population accounted for 26 percent of gun homicides, a 2017 analysis by The Guardian found.

Here is a look at four other cities, with data provided by the Princeton University researchers Alisabeth Marsteller and Patrick Sharkey:

Sources: Alisabeth Marsteller and Patrick Sharkey, Princeton University; Gun Violence Archive

Poverty and violence

There are several factors behind the concentration of violence. A major one is poverty.

In Chicago, violence and poverty closely overlap, as these maps demonstrate:

Poverty data from 2015 to 2019; grey regions are missing data. | Sources: University of Chicago Crime Lab; Chicago Health Atlas

Experts have long debated why violence and poverty are linked. Is it something specific to poverty, such as insufficient housing or jobs? Is it the environment that poverty fosters, in which people are stressed and desperate — and more likely to act out?

One theory, cited by Sharkey, blames the breakdown of "collective efficacy." That might sound academic, but the concept is straightforward: When society's institutions have unraveled, people feel that they are on their own. They are then less likely to watch over one another or come together to address common interests.

By reducing social trust, concentrated poverty hurts communities' ability to enforce norms against violent behavior. And when people are left unchecked and feel they have nothing to lose, they are more likely to take extreme measures, such as violence, to solve their problems.

The past few years may help you understand this dynamic even if you're not poor. Many Americans felt a hit to their own collective efficacy because of the Covid pandemic, George Floyd's murder and its aftermath, and the polarized political atmosphere. Sure enough, murders and other violent crimes increased during this period.

A spiral downward

It is difficult to talk about gun violence without talking about race, because Black Americans are most likely to be the victims of shootings. Poverty explains part of the disparity, since Black people are more likely to be poor. But individual poverty is not the full explanation.

Black Americans are also less likely to live in communities with strong institutional support. Exclusionary housing policies and discrimination have pushed Black Americans into segregated neighborhoods. Both governments and the private sector then neglected these neighborhoods, leaving people without good schools, banks, grocery stores and institutions.

This kind of economic neglect, which experts refer to as disinvestment, fosters violence. These maps show the correlation in Chicago between shootings and a lack of banks:

"Many" represents at least a third of the population. | Sources: University of Chicago Crime Lab; Bank Branch Locator

The relationship also goes the other way, Roseanna Ander, executive director of the Crime Lab, told us: Violence can perpetuate disinvestment. Business owners do not want their shops, restaurants and warehouses in violent neighborhoods. People do not want to live in places where gunshots are fired daily. And governments shift resources away from places that officials deem lost causes. It is a vicious cycle.

A greater understanding of this spiral in recent years has driven activists and policymakers to address not just violence itself but its root causes, too. The Chicago mayor's office told us it had adopted a broader approach to combating violence, focused on boosting businesses, local clubs, mental health care and other social supports, on top of traditional policing work. As this newsletter has explained before, most experts support an all-of-the-above strategy to crime, involving both the police and alternative approaches.

But this work is difficult and, even if it succeeds, takes money and time — years or decades to rebuild long-neglected communities. Until then, the people in these neighborhoods will likely suffer the worst of American gun violence.

THE LATEST NEWS

Assassination in Japan

Shinzo Abe today in Nara, Japan, just before he was fatally shot.Toshiharu Otani/Agence France-Presse, via Jiji Press/Afp Via Getty Images

Shinzo Abe, 67, former prime minister of Japan, died after being shot while giving a speech.
The police said a 41-year-old man was in custody.
From the scene: Two loud sounds and a plume of smoke before Abe collapsed.
Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, resigned in 2020 because of ill health. Read his obituary.

Politics

Unaccompanied children from Guatemala, in Roma, Texas.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the authorities to apprehend migrants and return them to the border, setting up a clash with the federal government.
The I.R.S. asked an internal watchdog to review its Trump-era audits of James Comey and Andrew McCabe.
Senate Democrats are trying to revive pieces of Biden's domestic policy bill, including taxing high earners to fund Medicare.
Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 people, among them the gymnast Simone Biles.

MORNING READS

The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

Biography: Ken Auletta has finally written the Harvey Weinstein story he wanted to tell.

Deals: How Wish built — and fumbled — a dollar store for the internet.

Modern Love: Losing a pregnancy, a marriage and pearls.

A Times classic: The power of touch.

Advice from Wirecutter: Repurpose used candle jars.

Lives Lived: James Caan's Oscar-nominated performance as Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather" was so convincing that some people thought he was a real mobster. "I've been accused so many times," Caan once said. He died at 82.

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

What went wrong for Baker Mayfield? The former No. 1 pick was hailed as the quarterback to end decades of frustration in Cleveland. Now traded away four years later, what happened?

Picking the M.L.B. All-Star rosters: Ken Rosenthal's full roster picks are here. He's courting controversy with his starting pitchers.

N.H.L. draft shake-up: Shane Wright, once the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2022 N.H.L. draft, fell to No. 4 last night. Here's a breakdown of every first-round pick, and the biggest winners.

A World Cup locked in: The U.S. women's national soccer team qualified for the 2023 World Cup last night, with new stars rising.

For access to all Athletic articles, subscribe to New York Times All Access or Home Delivery.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The tenor George Shirley in rehearsal for "La Bohème."Dan Winters for The New York Times

The future of opera

Yuval Sharon, 42, is a visionary opera director who has worked around the world and who won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 2017. His boldest venture to date may be his decision to become the artistic director of Detroit Opera, Mark Binelli writes in The Times Magazine: "Sharon has already radically elevated Detroit Opera's status in the larger cultural ecosystem."

In April, Sharon directed "La Bohème" for Detroit Opera, and he wasn't interested in putting it on in a traditional way. His version unfolded in reverse order, opening with Act IV, in which Mimì dies, and ending with Act I, in which she and her lover, Rodolfo, first meet.

"Detroit has died and been reborn so many times that Sharon's reworking of the classic felt like an oblique nod to the city," Mark writes. It also helps show what modern opera can be. "The future of American opera unfolding in Detroit was not a plot twist I saw coming," Mark writes.