Dr. Anthony Braga, Director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, weighed in on the correlation between gun caliber and fatal shootings in the New York Times article “People Kill People. But Bullets Matter, Too, and the Bigger, the Deadlier.”
The article shares his research, which examines whether there is an association between the likelihood of death for firearms shooting victims and the caliber of the firearm used.
Dr. Braga conducted a cross-sectional study using a working sample of 221 gun homicides and a random sample of 300 nonfatal cases drawn from the 1012 that occurred in Massachusetts from 2010 to 2014. His findings state that firearms caliber was associated with the likelihood of death from gunshot wounds in criminal assault. Shootings with larger-caliber handguns were more deadly but no more sustained or accurate than shootings with smaller-caliber handguns. The research study initially appeared in JAMA Network Open, and has since been covered by the Washington Post, Reuters, Northeastern News, and others. Dr. Braga’s research findings could play a significant role in restructuring policies to prevent gun violence in our communities.
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