In a study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health, my colleague Christopher Wildeman and I applied the science of social networks to patterns of gun homicide in Chicago. The idea is straightforward: Treat gun homicide like a blood-borne pathogen, something transmitted from person to person through specific risky behaviors. Put another way, gun violence is not an airborne pathogen: You don’t catch a bullet like you catch a cold.
More than 40 percent of all gun homicides in the study occurred within a network of 3,100 people, roughly 4 percent of the community’s population. Simply being among the 4 percent increased a person’s odds of being killed by a gun by 900 percent.
These numbers tell us that gun violence spreads like HIV infection: You’re more likely to “catch” the disease if you engage in risky behaviors with someone who might be infected. And it’s not just people’s friends who affect their likelihood of getting shot, but also their friends’ friends. This is similar to the transmission of HIV: Your current partner’s past sexual partners affect your exposure, even if you don’t know them.
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