The Gift Of Fire
Sep 3, 2018 · 1 min read

I’d read some of your early pieces on gun violence, but hadn’t seen that one. I like the detail you put into your series of gun posts, and the way that you work the issue thoroughly to come up with potential solutions — ending the (racist) war on drugs is, indeed, an underappreciated approach to reducing gun violence in America.

You quote the NY times article based on Chetty’s research, so it sounds like we’re very much on the same page here.

If I may make one subtle criticism of your work, I’d point out that it’s not fair to compare homicide rates across the 20th century, as you do here:

https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/the-gun-homicide-epidemic-isnt-ac13b21ff3f9

You are neglecting advances in trauma medicine that have increased the survivability of a gun shot. Lethality went down by about a factor of 3, from 1960 to 2000:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108876790200600203

This doesn’t invalidate your point — we are still doing better than the early 90’s spike in violent crime, and few people appreciate this improvement. We may not be doing as well as you think compared to the 1950's, though.

    The Gift Of Fire

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    Writing about human evolution, prehistory, and whatever else I’m currently geeking out about.