The Unlikelihood of D.C.'s Firearm Injury Data

According to a dashboard from the D.C. Department of Health, visits to hospital emergency rooms in the city for firearm injuries went from 650 a year in 2017 to almost twice that—1,252—in 2022.

That prevalence coincided with the large increase in homicides around that time—going from 116 to 274 a year.

But D.C. homicide data is an oddity and may not be reliable. It has increased while most other crimes have either declined or stayed about the same.

Ostensibly, the emergency room data might appear to support the homicide data being accurate. Lots of people are showing up as shot in emergency rooms because more people are being shot.

But while homicides have increased, incidents of assault with a deadly weapon, which includes attempted homicide with a firearm, have not. In 2016, there were 2,277 incidents of assault with a deadly weapon. In 2022, there were 1,407.

Essentially, more and more people are showing up to emergency rooms with firearm injuries, but there are fewer reported incidents of people being shot where the victim survives.

Not only is it increasing as police reports go down, it’s an incredibly large number of people showing up with firearm injuries.

The number of firearm injuries used to be 35 percent of reported assaults with a deadly weapon in 2017. In 2022, it represented 89 percent.

Potentially, some of that discrepancy can be explained by edge cases. There could be an influx of self-inflicted or accidental firearm injuries. There could be more cases where a victim is shot and survives, but the incident is not reported to the police. There could be more shootings, yet fewer where the victim survives.

But none of those explanations really explains such a large shift in the data—why deadly weapon assaults would decline by a thousand yet 600 more people would show up to the emergency room with a firearm injury each year.