Tuesday Night Owls: Surge of gun violence added to the traumas of 2020

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

22 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Champe Barton, Brian Freskos, and Daniel Nass at The Trace write—A Historic Surge in Gun Violence Compounds the Traumas of 2020. In over a dozen cities, homicides rose by 50 percent or more this year. “It’s very likely that these increases are larger than any on record,” said one criminologist:

 From Oakland to Chicago to New York City, homicides and shootings crept toward — and sometimes exceeded — all-time highs. The sudden upswing reversed decades of progress, and provides a prism for the intersecting crises that characterized 2020. While researchers are still picking over the causes, the consequences of the violence are plain: Thousands of communities, families, and parents like Foster forced to manage terrible voids — and saddled with the knowledge that at any moment, more gunfire could tear open new ones.

Meanwhile, other types of crime such as burglary, larceny, and drug offenses declined across the country.

While nearly every type of gun violence spiked this year, mass shootings showed a particularly steep increase. In spite of the social isolation imposed by the pandemic, the number of shootings with four or more victims exceeded any recent year by more than 50 percent. […]