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Epidemiology of Firearms and Homicide: The Need for Basic Science (From Nature of Homicide: Trends and Changes - Proceedings of the 1996 Meeting of the Homicide Research Working Group, Santa Monica, California, P 190-204, 1996, Pamela K Lattimore and Cynthia A Nahabedian, eds. - See NCJ-166149)

NCJ Number
168587
Author(s)
P H Blackman
Date Published
1996
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Recognizing that public health professionals have called for the use of epidemiological methods to study violence, particularly firearm-related homicide, this literature review uses epidemiology texts to evaluate the extent to which research on the link between firearms and homicide has complied with epidemiological methods.
Abstract
Three texts are employed to assess how epidemiology can be applied to the study of homicide, and several medical journals concerned with violence as a public health issue are reviewed to evaluate how epidemiology can be specifically used to study firearm-related homicide. The focus is on applying the epidemiological paradigm to the study of firearms and violence. Particular attention is paid in the literature review to ecological fallacies; agents as causative or preventive, susceptibilities of hosts, morbidity and mortality, research protocols and community trials, case control studies, and temporality and causality. The author indicates that most of the literature has seriously failed to consider the issues associated with firearm-related homicide and that basic epidemiological research should precede policy recommendations in any controversial area. 73 references