Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, major cities across the United States (U.S.) experienced a surge in firearm-related fatalities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022; Sun et al., 2022), which have since not returned to pre-pandemic levels (Davis, Kim, & Crifasi, 2023). Even more, firearm-related injuries replaced motor vehicle accidents in 2020 as the leading cause of death of children and adolescents (Goldstick, Cunningham, & Carter, 2022). In the following year, the CDC found firearm-related fatalities to be the highest in recorded history (Simon et al., 2022). Unfortunately, these sobering facts underestimate the scope of firearm violence in the U.S.
Federal, private, and non-profit entities have allocated significant resources toward the development of national data systems focused on the measurement of firearm-related fatalities. Yet, nonfatal shooting injuries are three to four times as frequent as fatal injuries (Hipple & Magee, 2017; Kaufman et al., 2021), with significant social and economic costs (Magee, 2022a, 2022b). Subject matter experts define a nonfatal shooting injury as a penetrating wound caused by a projectile from a weapon with a powdered discharge or explosive (e.g., Beaman et al., 2000; Hipple, 2022; Hipple et al., 2020; Parker, 2021).
While several national data systems measure nonfatal shooting injuries, they have significant limitations for firearm violence research. To start, nonprofit organizations like the Gun Violence Archive identify nonfatal shooting injuries from news media, among other sources (Gun Violence Archive, 2023). As such, the identification of nonfatal shooting victims is affected by the newsworthiness of the shooting event, which raises concerns regarding the representativeness of the data system. Furthermore, many hospital-based data systems are not linked (e.g., the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Nationwide Emergency Department and Inpatient Samples, and the CDC’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System), reducing their comprehensiveness. These data systems also often lack specificity and consistency to inform policy and practice, in part because they are designed for surveillance and not research purposes (Annest & Mercy, 1998; Campbell, Nass, & Nguyen, 2018; Min et al., 2019).
In addition, data collected by law enforcement agencies (LEAs) plays an instrumental role in the measurement of firearm violence through the National Incident-based Reporting System (NIBRS). Supported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, 2013, 2021), NIBRS replaced the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Summary Reporting System (UCR-SRS) in 2021. Currently, 66% of the U.S. population is covered by NIBRS through participating LEAs (FBI, 2023a).
As it relates to firearm violence, research suggests that NIBRS is superior to the UCR-SRS (Parker, 2021, 2022). NIBRS captures the involvement of a firearm as an additional data element for a broader array of offense categories than the UCR-SRS, including sexual assault and rape in addition to aggravated assault and robbery. It also implements error and quality checks that prevent conflicting offense categories from being submitted and requires the entry of weapon and injury types when relevant.
Despite these advantages, NIBRS does not have a dedicated offense category for nonfatal shootings, nor does it have a data element for victim injury type that identifies a gunshot wound. In their absence, the aggravated assault offense category serves as a proxy for nonfatal shootings when combined data elements capturing the involvement of a firearm (w/firearm) and injury (w/injury) to the victim.1 However, this proxy suffers from two key setbacks. First, nonfatal shooting incidents may be captured in NIBRS as an offense other than an aggravated assault (w/firearm and w/injury). And second, the presence of a firearm does not guarantee that an injury sustained to a victim was caused by its discharge.
Ultimately, the methodological shortcomings of these national data systems limit their usefulness for firearm violence research. Reliable and valid data on nonfatal shooting injuries are needed to better direct the allocation of limited local, state, and federal resources aimed toward advancing understanding of the causes and correlates of firearm violence. Complementing these efforts, this data would afford LEAs, among other entities, the ability to conduct more comprehensive and tailored evaluations of the effectiveness of firearm violence prevention and intervention efforts. National evaluations of these efforts have been unable to consider nonfatal shooting injuries, despite being a clear outcome measure. In contrast, local evaluations conducted in Detroit, Michigan, (e.g., De Biasi et al., 2019; Circo et al., 2020, 2021), for example, have been enhanced by the availability of such data collected by the Detroit Police Department (DPD).
As seen in Detroit, some LEAs have developed nonfatal shooting tracking systems to support their firearm violence prevention and interventions initiatives (Hipple, 2022; Hipple, et al., 2020). While often not united by a common definition, there is evidence to support these systems as reliable and valid sources of nonfatal shooting incidents (Hipple et al., 2020; Kaufman et al., 2021; Magee et al., 2021; Post et al. 2019). For example, Magee et al. (2021) found evidence supporting LEA records as a more comprehensive and complete source of information on nonfatal shooting incidents compared to hospital-based records. In addition, Hipple (2022) found evidence supporting LEA records as a superior source of information on nonfatal shooting incidents compared to the UCR-SRS. Given its advancements, the replacement of the UCR-SRS with NIBIRS in 2021 drives the need for additional research in this area.
The purpose of our study is to assess the ability of NIBRS to identify nonfatal shooting incidents through a crosswalk comparison of known nonfatal shooting incidents identified by the Detroit Police Department (DPD) from 2017 through 2020. To do so, we consider crime data submitted by DPD to the Michigan State Police (MSP) for reporting in the Michigan Incident Crime Reporting System (MICR), a preliminary step before its submission to NIBRS. Our crosswalk study advances research in this area which has only previously compared NIBRS to the UCR-SRS (e.g., Parker, 2021) and the UCR-SRS to LEA internal records (e.g., Hipple, 2022). Specifically, our findings demonstrate the value of expanding NIBIRS to improve the measurement of nonfatal shooting injuries and the importance of LEAs in driving this change and supporting firearm violence research, including prevention and intervention efforts.
[1] NIBRS defines an aggravated assault as “an unlawful attack by one person upon another wherein the offender uses a dangerous weapon or displays it in a threatening manner or the victim suffers obvious severe or aggravated bodily injury, or where there was a risk for serious injury/intent to seriously injure” (FBI, 2021, p. 17).