Publication
Missing the Mark? A Typology of Lethal and Non-Lethal Firearm Violence in the Netherlands
In this article, Katharina Krüsselman, Pauline Aarten, and Marieke Liem describe the complex phenomenon of firearms violence and the importance of including non-lethal firearms violence in understanding this phenomenon.
- Author
- Katharina Krüsselmann, Pauline Aarten, and Marieke Liem
- Date
- 27 March 2024
- Links
- Read the full article here
Firearms are considered the most lethal type of weapon commonly used in interpersonal violent encounters. Recent years have witnessed a substantial growth in empirical studies on firearm violence in Europe. In this study, the authors use 243 cases of lethal shootings (2015–2021) and 807 cases of non-lethal shootings in the Netherlands (2018–2021) to build a typology of firearm violence using agglomerative hierarchical clustering. The analysis results show five distinct types: urban lethal shootings, urban injurious shootings, and urban non-injurious shootings, as well as suburban and rural shootings.
Krüsselmann, Aarten, and Liem conclude that the inclusion of non-lethal firearm violence is necessary in understanding and act upon this multifaceted problem. They show that firearm violence in itself is heterogenous. The findings further support the necessity for the inclusion of public health factors in future studies on lethality of shootings.