Publication date: Dec 24, 2024

In 2020, the public health crises of gun violence and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) collided and interventions to decrease COVID-19 transmission displaced millions of Americans from normal activity. We analyzed the effects of COVID-19 and its resultant shutdowns on gun violence in Buffalo, NY. We queried the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and the hospital databases from the 2 level 1 trauma centers which serve Buffalo firearm victims between March 15th and June 24th, 2020 (“COVID”) and the same time period for years 2013 (hospital data)/2014 (GVA data) through 2019 (“pre-COVID”) and 2021 through 2022 (“post-COVID”). Data points collected included number of daily victims, victim age, gender, and morbidity/mortality. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to compare gun violence in these 3 periods. There were 518 and 913 victims in the GVA and hospital data sets, respectively. Bivariate analyses showed fewer incidents on Saturdays during the pandemic in both data sets (P 0. 05). There was no change in number of gun violence victims during the COVID-19 shutdowns compared to pre-COVID and post-COVID periods in Buffalo, NY. However, there was a change in the weekly temporality of gun violence during the COVID pandemic. Multiple databases are needed to accurately capture gun violence from an epidemiologic perspective.

Semantics

Original Article