Homicide in the US
Peaked in 1990s and 2020-2021 and increasingly involves guns
Homicide in Chicago
Exaggerated in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas
Homicide in similar systems
Drastically higher than our (even armed) peers
Homicide high violence countries
Temporal trends unlike high violence nations
The
Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
- 6200 children from 7 age cohorts, born 1978 to 1996
- 3 interviews from 1995–2003
- Representative of Chicago and its neighborhoods
PHDCN+
- 60% subsample of 4 cohorts
- 1057 interviewed in 2012
- 682 followed-up in 2021
- Followed throughout the US
Funded by:
Timeline
- Adolescent exposure high in early 1990s, low afterward
- Adult exposure low until 2016-2021
- Black and Hispanic males at highest risk
Question: What drove these large swings in violence and exposure?
- One key proximal cause: gun carrying
Adolescent-onset
- \(\frac{1}{3}\) of those ever carrying
- Most age out
- Associated with immediate dangerous contexts
- High risk of use
Adult-onset
- \(\frac{2}{3}\) of those ever carrying
- Most still carrying today
- Associated with insecurity and diffuse threats
- Low but cumulative use risk
How does this relate to macro-level changes in gun violence?
Changing age distribution of homicide
Age of handgun homicide offenders
Homicide victimization by sex
Homicide victimization by race
[a] normative conception of legal cynicism as a state in which the (legal) rules of society are no longer seen as binding within a community: “Normlessness and powerlessness tend also to go hand in hand, breeding cynicism about the rules of the society and their application”.
The inclination to violence springs from the circumstances of life… The code of the street is actually a cultural adaptation to a profound lack of faith in the police and the judicial system
Guns also:
- Confer status
- Deter threats
- Facilitate dominance
Concentrated disadvantage → alienation from institutions
a cultural frame in which people perceive the law as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety.
when calling the police is not a viable option to remedy one’s problems—individuals may instead resolve their grievances by their own means
… two racially differentiated beliefs promote legal gun carrying: The belief common among most carriers that police are inadequate protectors—and thus one may carry a gun as protection from crime—and the belief more common among non-white carriers that police are coercive violators of rights—and thus one may carry a gun as protection from and resistance to the oppressive state (Lanfear et al. 2024)
Linked to diffuse social and economic insecurities
Despite having much higher arrest rates, the cohort born in 1987 has greater levels of trust in police and neighbors at age twenty-five than counterparts born just nine years later, adjusting for background factors and early-life conditions (Sampson 2026)
Stroebe et al. (2017) find protective gun ownership is primarily driven by “the belief that the world is a dangerous and unstable place, populated by bad people, and that society is at the brink of collapse.”
Low trust… may increase the likelihood of interpreting others’ actions as intentional and offensive, a key antecedent of interpersonal conflict and homicide (Luckenbill 1977; Ludwig 2025).
Early evidence
New worries
Onset of concealed carry by age
- Rapidly rises in adolescence, then again in 30s
- Differences sharpest in adolescence
Onset of concealed carry by year
- Adult increases are period effects
- Large increases in new carriers since 2016
Continuity: Who is still carrying in 2020?
- 60% of young carriers not carrying today
- Young carriers no more likely to carry without permits
Exposure to gun violence and carrying
- Exposed adolescents twice as likely to carry
- Adult carry similar between those exposed and not
Social change and the life course
Classic concerns of demography and life course research… mostly