> They noted with interest that it appears Oakland’s gunfire was at least twice as deadly as Washington’s gunfire. Although the researchers couldn’t come up with the reasons behind this difference (Were Washington’s gunmen poor shots? Did victims in Oakland get to the hospital more slowly?), the difference points to how measuring gun violence with homicides is problematic.

This is posing the question wrong. If some area has half as many fatalities per gunshot, they're clearly doing something right. The problematic thing is the implicit shifting of the question to "how to reduce gun violence" from "how to reduce harm" in the first place. Nobody is going to prefer the city that has half as many gunshots but twice as many fatalities.

The interesting thing about numbers like this is the unexplained difference. If you can explain it then maybe Oakland can do what Washington has been doing and fewer people will die -- even if that thing has nothing to do specifically with gun violence, like improving emergency response time.