How Illinois Ranks For Gun-Related Hospitalizations

Chicago IL

12 May, 2021

10:36 AM

Description

ILLINOIS — Illinois ranks among states with the most residents who have been hospitalized with firearm injuries over a 16-year period, according to a recently released report. Thirteen in every 100,000 Illinois residents were hospitalized with firearm injuries between 2000 and 2016, a new database developed by The Rand Corp. shows. Nationwide, nearly 548,000 people were hospitalized with similar injuries during that period. The report, released last week by the nonprofit nonpartisan think tank, hopes to fill a gap in state-level firearm injury data. Currently, there is no single resource in the country that offers this kind of data, according to researchers. "This lack of information limits our ability to answer basic questions about gun violence, such as whether trends in gun injuries are changing over time, or whether existing strategies to reduce firearm-related harms are effective," researchers said in a news release. The report was released less than five months into 2021, a year in which Americans have seen a staggering number of mass shootings. On March 16, a single gunman targeted three Atlanta-area massage businesses, killing eight people. Only a week later, a gunman opened fire in a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, killing 10 people before police apprehended the suspect. Last month, yet another gunman opened fire in an Indianapolis FedEx facility, killing eight people before killing himself. RELATED: Indianapolis FedEx Shooting: Police Identify 8 Victims Boulder Grocery Store Shooting Victims Identified Women Killed In Atlanta Spa Shooting Rampage Identified Illinois has already experienced a number of incidents that have been deemed mass shootings by police this year. In January, three people were killed and another four people were injured in a shooting that started on the South Side of Chicago Chicago and ended in Evanston. The shooter, who was indentified as Jason Nightengale, was shot and killed by police. In March, two people were killed and another 13 people were injured at an early-morning party in Chicago's Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood before five people were injured in a shooting later in the month in the city's Austin neighborhood. Also in March, one person was killed and two others were injured after they were shot while traveling on Interstate 57and a little girl was shot and killed while sitting in a car in a McDonald's drive-thru. In May, two men and three women were wounded in a drive-by shooting on Chicago's West Side before four people were shot on May 5 while they were sitting on their porch in the City's South Shore neighborhood. In all, there have been 187 mass shootings in the United States in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The definition of a mass shooting is when at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter, according to the archive, which tracks mass shootings in the United States. To develop its report, Rand pulled data from several sources, including summaries of hospital inpatient data collected through state health departments. The estimates in the report do not include emergency department visits that do not result in a hospitalization, or gunshot injuries for which hospital-based medical care is not sought. In 2016, the national average of hospitalizations due to firearm injury was 10 per every 100,000 residents. Illinois was higher than the national average recording 13 hospitalizations per every 100,000 residents. Between 2000 and 2016, the state's average reached as high as 15 hospitalizations for every 100,000 residents in 2002 and dipping as low as 10 in 2013 before moving back up to 14 in the final year of the survey. The following states had the highest average number of hospitalizations due to firearm injury, according to the report: Louisiana: 24 per 100,000 residents Tennessee: 18 per 100,000 residents Alabama, Missouri and Maryland: 16 per 100,000 residents These states had the lowest number: Hawaii: 2 per 100,000 residents Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine: 3 per 100,000 residents Iowa and North Dakota: 4 per 100,000 residents See the full Firearm Injury Hospitalizations in America report.