Shots fired! But how many are reported?

摘要

If a gun is fired and someone ends up dead, US police tend to find out about it one way or another. But if a bullet whizzes past its intended victim, or if it is fired in anger at no particular target, such incidents might go unreported. If the occasional stray gunshot is a fact of life in your neighbourhood, you may not think it worth calling 911. This is a problem for those who want to understand the true level of gun violence in the USA, according to economists Jillian Carr and Jennifer Doleac: "Gun violence research typically focuses on gun homicides to minimize concerns about underreporting, but obviously not all shots fired (or guns wielded as a threat) result in death". In a new paper, the two researchers offer up a potential solution to this problem: ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system that has been adopted by more than 90 jurisdictions across the United States (bit.ly/1QTWZI4).