• Rebecca Robbins, Mahmoud Affouf, Peter T Masiakos, Jay M Iyer, Cornelia Griggs, Elizabeth B Klerman, and Chana A Sacks.
• Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Departments of Medicine and Neurology, Brigham & Women's Hospital; Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. rrobbins4@bwh.harvard.edu.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Oct 1; 39 (13): 238023892380-2389.

BackgroundGunshots affect those directly involved in an incident and those in the surrounding community. The community-level impact of nighttime gunshots, which may be particularly disruptive to the sleep of nearby community members, is unknown.ObjectiveOur aim is to estimate the number of people potentially affected by nighttime gunshots and the relationship between nighttime gunshots and median household income in the USA.DesignWe collected publicly available data on the timing and location of gunshots in six U.S. cities (Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Washington, D.C.; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Portland, OR) from 2015 to 2021. We then analyzed the data by computing rate ratios (RRs) to compare the frequency of gunshots during nighttime hours (6:00 pm to 5:59 am) versus daytime hours (6:00 am to 5:59 pm). Additionally, we used geospatial mapping to create choropleth maps to visualize the variation in nighttime gunshot density across cities. We estimated, using city-wide population, person-nights potentially impacted by the sound of gunshots within areas of 0.2- (low) and 0.5-mile (high) radius. Finally, for five of six cities where data on median household income were available by census tract, we built nonlinear regression models to estimate the relationship between the number of nighttime gunshots and median household income.Key ResultsWe analyzed 72,236 gunshots. Gunshots were more common during the nighttime than daytime (overall RR = 2.5). Analyses demonstrated that the low estimates for the mean annual number of person-nights impacted by nighttime gunshots were 0.4 million in Baltimore and Portland, 1.3 million in Philadelphia, 1.6 million in Boston, 2.9 million in New York City, and 5.9 million in Washington. The number of nighttime gunshots was inversely related to median household income.ConclusionsNighttime gunshots are prevalent, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, and may have under-recognized effects on the surrounding community.© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Society of General Internal Medicine.

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