03-07-2023, 05:21 PM
(03-07-2023, 04:57 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Those statistics don't tell the whole story. In the 1970's, Ben Taub hospital was one of the few true Level 1 trauma centers in the US. Now, almost every major city has at least one. People are much more likely to live through a shooting now than they were there. It parallels soldiers dying in combat. They are much more apt to survive now than they were in Korea or WWII. And it starts in the golden hour, you know have rescue units with highly trained paramedics there within minutes, as opposed to they used to take shooting victims to the hospital in the back of the police paddy wagon. To get an accurate picture, look at shootings as opposed to murders. And you're right, Louisville is currently in the middle of gang wars and has become very dangerous.
This is a good point. I thought about this briefly after I posted that. Surprisingly, gun related crime data is really hard to find. I did find this from the FBI which details non-fatal firearm crimes. It looks like it tells a similar story. In the early 90's, roughly 1.5MM people were being shot (non-fatal and fatal). As of 2011, which is the most recent this data goes, that number was down to 470k. That would be a nearly 70% reduction in gun violence from 1993 to 2011. Still, it doesn't provide the overall view I am wanting to see. I think that from what I have found (and read in the past), society is significantly less violent today than it was 30-40 years ago, but we simply hear about everything due to the 24 hour news cycle.