The other day I was listening to the podcast, 99 percent Invisible, titled “287 – The Nut Behind the Wheel“. While close to 99 percent of the podcast was an interesting overview of automobile safety and the fight over increased regulation of auto makers to include safety feature, one thing of interest they noted was the lack of detailed statistics relating to gun violence, although I would argue we should not look at gun violence per se, but collect more detailed data on murder and suicide by all methods. It ultimately doesn’t matter how a person dies from suicide or murder, it matters that they are dying prematurely.

There are two primary sources that policy makers, activist groups, and members of the public use to get data on murder and suicide. There is the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) WONDER database which contains mortality data broken down by county, age, sex and cause of the generalized cause of death. There also is the Unified Crime Reporting (UCR) System that focuses on crime reported to police, in which murder statistics are reported, with a breakdown of victims and criminals by location, by race, by gender, by generalized murder weapon type (rifle, shotgun, hands, or object), and a few other specifications.

The problem is we know many people are being murdered and commit suicide, but details on actual suicides and murders are not collected in a comprehensive and standardized matter. This is much different then a fatal car crash, where a detailed report is created and except for personal information, the detailed report is made available to the public as part of FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System). FARS is very detailed, it shows how the cars collided, what object was hit, and how the person died.

Murder and suicide statistics could be greatly improved if police agencies were required to investigate and report on murders and suicides the same way they report on fatal car crashes. If we had the data, we could have an informed debate on topics like murder and suicide prevention eventually leading to sensible changes to public policy and firearms that could save lives. Not government reports driven by ideology but by actual data, recognizing that every policy has pros and cons that we the public must seriously consider.

Here is some of the data I think is worthwhile to collect and make public about suicide and murders that isn’t already collected in the Unified Crime Reporting System or the CDC’s Wonder Database:

– How exactly a person died. Was it a shot to head, the lungs, the heart, the brain? Did they fall and crack open their head? If they drowned, how long where they in the river before that happened? What role did lead poisoning lead to their death? WONDER gives broad categories, but unlike a fatal car collision, there is no data collected on how exactly the person died – just broad categories of death. Again, it would be useful to know the caliber of weapon was when it happened.

– What firearms, including make, model and caliber are being used for suicide and murder. For murder, the UCR gives us broad categories like shotgun, rifle, handgun, hand/feet, object. But it would be useful to know if particular guns are used for particularly high number of suicides and murders. For example statistics might show a Remington 870 12-guage shotguns used for certain types of suicides, while Glock might be used for murder. We don’t know until the data is collected and publicly shared.

– What type of facility where are murders and suicides are occurring. Certain Bridges? Tall buildings? School grounds or malls? Farms or business places? In the woods, in the barn? Homes or apartments? Alleyway? Tenement buildings? Government office buildings? Parks? Sidewalks? Bathrooms? This would inform the debate on which places are most dangerous, and may deserve more policing and better lighting – or possibly changes in their design.

– What kind of weather is occurring when suicides and murders occur. Is it hot outside, raining, or snowing? We have data currently on time of day and year from WONDER and UCR, but not the environmental conditions. If the statistics suggest it, on warm clear summer nights, maybe we need more policing on such nights in certain neighborhoods.

– Most law enforcement these days has access to criminal records files and to a certain extent mental health records. Any suicide or murder report should include information both for the victim and perpetrator whether or not they have or had a criminal record or known mental health issue. It would be very useful to know if murdered individuals were convicted of certain crimes or if their perpetrator of the crime had a criminal record or known mental health issue. This would better inform the debate over mental health in our country, and let us decide if we need to change our nation’s incarceration policies to ensure dangerous people are not allowed on the street.

– Information on what gangs the perpetrator and victim are known to be associated with. There are some statistics on gang membership, but there is no universal reporting of which gangs are causing which murders, and how and when they are operate.

– Does the perpetrator or the victim have permits to carry firearms concealed or possess the firearms in case of a state like New York? This would help better inform the debate over concealed and open carry. It also would provide an evaluation of the effectiveness of gun registration laws. If gun registration laws don’t actually work, it could help build the case for repealing them.

– What is the source of the weapon used? Is it a stolen firearm? Is it a legally registered or unregistered gun? This data is usually investigated in murders but less in suicides but is not centrally compiled into a database. They’re is a lot of talk about illegal guns used in crime, but that data is not widely available to the public.

These are all good ideas, but why don’t they happen?

Murder and suicide are intentional acts, and there is a view that providing the public with data on how they occur are likely to provide an instruction manual on how to murder or commit suicide.

For example, if it’s released that the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York State is the most popular one for people to commit suicide on, it may encourage suicidal individuals to drive over to that bridge and jump off of that one, knowing they have a good likelihood of dying. If it is shown that a particular brand of firearm is more effective at murdering people, or that a lung shot is the best way to kill a person, murders are more likely to purchase that firearm or go for a lung shot.

As fatal car crashes for the most part are “unintentional” in nature, few people bar insurance fraudsters or those wishing to take their life in an automobile could benefit from studying the FARS database. And how many insurance fraudsters are suicidal, working to crash a car in a way that they die? There isn’t much of a public safety hazard to releasing detailed information on fatal car crashes. The same can’t necessarily be said about detailed murder and suicide methodology and statistics.