Young Black men in areas of Chicago, Philly more likely to die from guns than troops in battle

Chicago police work the scene where a 24-year-old man was shot and killed in the 4400 block of West Jackson Boulevard, in West Garfield Park, Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. About half of the country’s shootings take place in just 1% to 5% of the land area in U.S. cities, writes Alex Knorre, a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston College. (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times)

Mass shootings tend to dominate the debate over gun violence, but they accounted for just 3% of all firearm homicides in the United States in 2021.

The vast majority of gun homicides are murders that happen in an extremely concentrated number of neighborhoods, places where the rate of gun deaths rivals war zones.