Gun violence among urban youth follows a pattern similar to that of an infectious disease epidemic and, like infection, is contagious, according to Dr. Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health and director of its Center for Violence Research and Prevention. Fagan discussed his analysis of how gun violence begins and spreads through inner-city neighborhoods during the recent annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) in Washington, D.C.

In New York City in 1985, 815 people were murdered with guns. This number steadily increased until 1991, when 1,644 gun homicides occurred. A rapid decline followed, and by 1995 the city's annual count of gun homicides was 818. The gun murder rate continues to decline. Gun homicide rates in other large American cities, as well as nationwide, mirrored this pattern.

Social scientists and other analysts have suggested that illegal drug activity and gang violence are responsible for such peaks and valleys. But Fagan asserts that guns and the social identities associated with these weapons, as well as poverty, social isolation, and lack of social control, are the engines driving the cycle.

Fagan used vital statistics for New York City from 1985 to 1995, census data, and interviews with young inner-city males to test his hypothesis. He examined the relationship between drug activity and gun homicides by looking at drug arrests and drug overdose deaths over this period of time and determined that drug marketing could not explain the cycle of gun violence.

After assembling census tracts into neighborhoods, he developed a model for analyzing the spatial diffusion of gun violence and found that the presence of gun homicides in one neighborhood significantly increased the likelihood of gun homicide in any of the surrounding neighborhoods during the subsequent year. Fagan's analysis revealed that poor neighborhoods and those with demographic characteristics that could contribute to a lack of social control and stability (for example, many more children, adolescents, and young adults than older individuals or family structures that were unable to provide support to family members) are more susceptible to the spread of gun homicide.

The mechanism for the spread of gun violence is social, Fagan says. He argues that guns have become status symbols necessary to inner-city life. The violent identity based on gun ownership is itself contagious and, according to Fagan, has eclipsed or devalued other identities. Boys and young men who do not build dominant identities for themselves, he explains, are considered punks and herbs, targets for harassment and violence. Meanwhile, the highest social status is given to crazy, wild young men who commit acts of extreme violence. In the middle are males who hold their own. They enjoy respect but may be frequently challenged to defend their status.

Fagan likens the spread of violence to an influenza epidemic, where the ill grows and spreads from the inside, often long after the origins have subsided. Because guns are so central to the spread of violence, he says, efforts to fight crime will be most successful if they focus on guns.

Office of External Affairs, Health Sciences