A new study is the first to establish a connection between higher temperatures and an elevated risk of shootings in the 100 largest cities in the country.
Cities from Philadelphia to Portland, have seen a spike in gun violence on warm days. While some researchers have started to explore the correlation between heat and firearm violence, the current studies on this subject are limited and concentrated on a small number of cities.
A new study conducted by the Boston University School of Public Health and the University of Washington School of Social Work offers the first-ever analysis of heat-related shootings as a national issue.
Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the study found a consistent relationship between higher temperatures and higher risk of shootings in 100 of the country’s most populated cities.
The comprehensive study reveals that nearly seven percent of shootings can be attributed to above-average daily temperatures, even after adjusting for seasonal patterns. The findings indicate that the Northeast and Midwest regions experience the sharpest increases in gun violence on hotter-than-normal days.
“Our study provides strong evidence that daily temperature plays a meaningful role in gun violence fluctuations,” says study senior author Dr. Jonathan Jay, assistant professor of community health sciences at BUSPH, director of BUSPH’s Research on Innovations for Safety and Equity (RISE) Lab, and a partnering faculty member of Boston University’s Center for Climate and Health (BU CCH). “Even though some regions showed larger or smaller effects, the general pattern is remarkably consistent across cities.”
Climate Change and Gun Violence Risk
Gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and teens, and this violence has worsened substantially during the pandemic. As climate change threatens to raise daily temperatures even more, the researchers say these findings underscore the need for ongoing policies and programs that acclimate communities to heat and mitigate the risk of heat-attributable gun violence.
“Our study really highlights the importance of heat adaptation strategies that can be used all year, as well as a need for specific regional awareness and attention in regions where this relationship is strongest,” says study lead author Dr. Vivian Lyons, a research scientist in the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, and who began the study as a postdoctoral fellow with the Firearm-safety Among Children & Teens (FACTS) Consortium at the University of Michigan.
Regional Variations in Heat-Related Shootings
For the study, Dr. Jay, Dr. Lyons, and colleagues utilized publicly available data from the Gun Violence Archive, a national repository of gun violence information. The team analyzed daily temperatures and more than 116,000 shootings from 2015 to 2020, in the top 100 US cities with the highest number of assault-related shootings in the country. Accounting for seasonality and regional climate differences, they found that 7,973 shootings were attributable to above-average temperatures. The temperatures associated with increased gun violence varied considerably across cities. For example, both Seattle and Las Vegas experienced the highest elevated risk of gun violence during days when the temperature soared within the 96th percentile range of average daily temperatures—but for Seattle, that temperature was 84 degrees, while in Las Vegas, it was 104 degrees.
“Cities with high rates of firearm violence should continue to implement firearm-prevention strategies broadly including credible messenger programs and hospital-based violence intervention programs,” Dr. Lyons says. “What our study suggests is that for cities with more heat-attributable shootings, implementing heat adaptation strategies at the community level—such as greening efforts that have been effective at reducing urban heat islands and have some association with reductions in firearm violence—may be particularly important.”
So what might be driving this association between heat and gun violence? “It could be that heat causes stress, which makes people more likely to use aggression,” Dr. Jay says. “Or it could be that people are more likely to get out on warmer days and have more interactions, which creates more opportunities for conflict and violence. Most likely, it’s a combination of both.”
Structural Racism and Urban Heat Inequities
Regionally, heat-attributable gun violence may be most pronounced in the Northeast and Midwest due to sharper fluctuations in temperature in those areas, even within seasons, or because cities in those regions are less acclimated to the heat, the researchers say. But those regions are also more racially segregated than other areas of the country. The study findings should be interpreted within the context of structural racism and racial inequities in exposure to gun violence and heat, says Dr. Jay.
“The Northeast and Midwest regions are where we see some of the starkest differences in the built environment and other resources, according to race—to me, these inequities are the most interesting and important direction of this work,” Dr. Jay says. “We know that segregation and disinvestment lead communities of color, especially Black communities, to have greater exposure to adverse environmental conditions that contribute to gun violence risks, such as abandoned buildings, liquor stores, lack of green space, and more intense urban heat islands.”
Integrated Solutions for Heat and Violence
Healthy tree canopy and other heat mitigation strategies can serve as part of a mission that’s “part racial justice, part climate change mitigation, and part gun violence prevention,” he says. “These are all urgent issues where we need to continue to partner with communities and work across disciplines.”
The researchers will next study differences in heat-related gun violence among neighborhoods, in a project funded by the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research and led by Dr. Zihan Lin, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Community Health Sciences at BUSPH and a researcher for BU CCH.
“This study extends our understanding of the many health harms associated with extreme heat,” says Dr. Gregory Wellenius, professor of environmental health and director of BU CCH. “I’m pleased that the new BU Center for Climate and Health can support this work as part of our commitment to research to reduce the health impacts of continued climate change.”
Reference: “Analysis of Daily Ambient Temperature and Firearm Violence in 100 US Cities” by Vivian H. Lyons, PhD, MPH, Emma L. Gause, MS, MA, Keith R. Spangler, PhD, ScM, Gregory A. Wellenius, ScD, MSc and Jonathan Jay, DrPH, JD, 16 December 2022, JAMA Network Open.
DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.47207
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6 Comments
“Gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and teens, and this violence has worsened substantially during the pandemic. ”
Now where did this come from? Any data to support this or just another propo type comment regurgitating what the machine has fed you?
This is not news. The FBI has known about the correlation between hot weather (not just “warm”) and violent crime (not just shootings) for decades, as documented in their annual Uniform Crime Report. The obvious reasons are the Urban Heat Island effect encouraging people living in flats and apartments lacking A/C, to sit outside on porches/entrance steps drinking beer and stronger alcoholic beverages to cool down. The proximity to many people and the loss of inhibitions from alcohol are clearly important factors. The CDC has also documented huge differences in firearm murder rates that vary by location and ethnicity. There are resources that are readily available (and have been for decades) that provide data for study.
Sure, correlation can exist, but it almost sounds like a forced correlation, and the article in a roundabout way admits it knows correlation does not equal causation… meaning I am seeing the same old checklist of leftist intersectional political talking points being squeezed in wherever they fit:
* racial justice
* climate change
* gun violence
* Social Development Research Group
* racial segregation, (and)
* disinvestment (lead to Black communities)
* structural racism
* racial inequities
And the lead author, Dr. Vivian Lyons, according to her LinkedIn profile studied/worked with:
* epidemiology focusing on firearm injury (gun violence leftist political talking point!)
* interpersonal violence (feminism!)
* survivors of domestic abuse (feminism!)
* youth leadership (feminism indoctrination!)
* sustainable community development (feminism!)
* works to end youth incarceration (feminism!)
* community-led solutions for systemic change (feminism!)
* advance health equity (feminism!)
* Amigos de las Americas (feminism indoctrination! including “cultural immersion, greater social awareness, stronger leadership skills, and increased passion to be agents of social change”)
So yeah, let’s just blame climate change/hot weather which exists seasonally throughout the entire country, then casually mention racial segregation leads to Black communities, when all cities have their own sections of different races, ethnicities, wealth differences, even an area where mostly gay men and women live like in my city’s Arts District. Then let’s slip in a claim that gun violence harms youth the most, because that’s what Dr. Lyons studied, except she doesn’t mention how other age groups are affected, nor does she bother to explain “why” the affected groups were different than the same groups elsewhere in the nation, nor does she take into account other obvious factors like mood disorders, personality disorders, drug and alcohol usage, and how social media messages that tout distorted claims on racism may affect the mental health of such communities.
“6.85% of all shootings were associated with above-average temperatures.”
Dr. Lyons, I’ll do you one better:
100% of all shootings everywhere and throughout all history are associated with people who drink water; therefore, water-drinking should be mitigated by new laws, for the safety of children.
Surely, you are not suggesting that she has brought her personal biases to the party! 🙂
Additionally, there is anecdotal evidence that prescription anti-depressants play a role in mass shootings. Neither academics or the Media wants to touch this ‘third rail.’
Rarely is it mentioned what role advertising plays except to castigate manufacturers advertising directly to minors. It seems to me that you can’t have it both ways. If direct advertising to minors is effective, surely violent Hollywood movies and video games displaying military firearms must instill a desire to have the real thing. Consider how much marketing people are willing to pay for a Superbowl half-time commercial of even just a few seconds, or how excited a company gets if their product or logo is displayed in a block-buster movie. The issue of gun-related violence doesn’t get discussed. Instead, the public is bombarded with preconceived Leftist opinion pieces or selected facts from what is disguised as news. Reality is far more complex than simplistic social hypotheses.
As I’ve already attempted to share with some authors of the study, a couple little known symptoms of long-term chronic subclinical non-IgE-mediated food/additive allergy reactions aggravated with FDA approved food poisoning (e.g., added MSG [since 1980], and soy [since the late 1960s], minimally) in progress are rapid pulse, irregular heartbeat and elevated body temperature. So, adding serious mood swings to what I wrote them, what can one expect of already stressed-out individuals on a hot/warm day in a naturally more stressful urban location, among all races and mostly the economically disadvantaged. It seems it’s also about time to factor those into some of the domestic abuse/violence and police brutality that continues to permeate the evening news. There’s an old saying about ‘you are what you eat’ and, therefore, toxic foods yield toxic behaviors.
Does no one watch Spike Lee anymore???!?