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Violence And Violence Essay

Decent Essays

Does Weapon Type Relate to Certain Types of Homicide?
Does gender matter?

Background Despite an increasing fear and continued concern, possibly being murder victims, the homicide rate in the United States for the past 25 years has remained consistently flat (Blumstein, Rivara, & Rosenfeld, 2000). Researchers have completed various studies showing the relationship among weapon type used in certain homicide type. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "70% of homicide victims were murdered by use of a firearm. Their findings also show 56% of those victims were killed by handguns" (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). When referring to gender, a study by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirms that "men are much more …show more content…

The CHD records every murder in Chicago from 1965 until 1995 and was disseminated by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) as 'Homicides in Chicago.' The data has been entered into one large data set to help researchers identify homicide patterns.
Along with the Chicago Homicide Data Set, the UCR was also used to compare homicide data with Illinois as an entirety for the years 1985 through 1995. This database, that began in 1985, includes law enforcement agencies that voluntarily report their annual crime counts for city populations greater than 10,000 and county populations greater than 25,000. This database is used currently by law enforcement agencies.
It is important to expand data research to other areas to understand who kills and why they kill. The CHD and UCR datasets identify multiple variables, but in this research, the specific units of analysis are the victims and case type. All three variables being explored include nominal data. Table 1 Variables and categories included in the research and categories for each variable. Results Prior to describing the Chicago data, it is significant to set the research in context. The average homicide count for Illinois between the years 1985 and 1995 was 1,154 per 100,000 population compared to 802 in Chicago.

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