Gun violence soars in Kansas City, but this year it’s not homicides. Nonfatal shootings are up
As homicides dropped in Kansas City this year, overall gun violence continued to soar, making 2024 one of the most violent years for nonfatal shootings in Kansas City’s history.
At the end of November, the number of what police term as “bullet-to-skin victims” stood at 544. That’s up 14% from 477 reported for the same period last year.
While this year won’t likely break the record of 626 nonfatal shooting victims set in 2020, it’s already become the second most violent year in Kansas City’s history for nonfatal shootings.
And police are not able to say why.
“There are no prevailing trends that investigators believe are leading to a rise in nonfatal shootings,” said Sgt. Phillip DiMartino, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department.
“We have seen a rise in scenes where there are multiple shooters and large amounts of shell casings,” DiMartino said, floating one theory for the rise.
Indeed, mass shootings, like at the Chiefs Super Bowl rally celebration Feb. 14 at Union Station where 25 people were injured and one woman, Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed, do play a role in the rise of nonfatal shooting victims this year.
But officials concede that doesn’t fully explain why the number of nonfatal shootings have trended upward for years.
“There is an impact on the numbers in the respective months when those incidents occurred, but those numbers are not the lone driver in the numbers increasing,” DiMartino said.
‘We have this anomaly’
Seth Fallik, associate professor and department chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said it’s unusual for homicide numbers to drop while nonfatal shootings climb.
Fallik, the principal investigator for Save KC, a new Kansas City coalition of community partners, social service agencies and law enforcement that aims to curb gun violence using a focused deterrence approach, is working with police and prosecutors to study the issue.
“We have this anomaly — usually, those figures go in tandem with a focused deterrence approach,” Fallik said.
Nationally, the country saw a decline in homicides in 2022 and 2023. But Kansas City was contrary to that trend. Kansas City set a record in 2020 with 182 killings and a new record in 2023 of 185 killings, which includes fatal police shootings.
To have record-breaking years so close together is concerning, Fallik said, attributing some of the problem to lax gun laws in Missouri.
“We’ve had the erosion of gun laws in the state of Missouri,” Fallik said. “That’s, you know, certainly been problematic for these types of causes.”
In fact, the number of nonfatal shooting victims has been on an upward trend since 2014, the earliest that “bullet-to-skin victims” was tracked. That year, there were 290 victims.
It was also the year a significant change occurred in Missouri gun laws: the minimum age for concealed and open carry was lowered to 19.
in 2016, the number of nonfatal shooting victims rose to 478, according to data provided by the Kansas City Police Department.
The “Stand Your Ground” law passed that year, replacing the duty to retreat. The following year, there were 506 victims, and gun laws changed again to allow concealed carry without a permit.
Although there was a dip in the number of victims in the next two years, the number of nonfatal shooting victims has exceeded 500 every year since 2020.
Since 2014, there have been a total of 5,367 nonfatal shooting victims and counting.
A lot of speculation as to why the numbers are up revolves around the type of firepower that is out on the street, Michael Mansur, spokesman for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, said.
“You have more powerful weapons, allowing shooters to shoot more bullets,” Mansur said.
Along with the greater firepower, there’s a prevalence and access to devices that turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic ones, said Fallik, who added that some of the devices can be printed on a 3D printer.
Fallik said people can augment weapons, and if they can’t control the gun, it creates a spray of bullets.
“The intended target was right in front of them, but they can’t control the gun, and so it sort of creates this cascade of bullets where bystanders get struck, even if they are not the intended target,” Fallik said.
Another theory is that police carry and use tourniquets in the field more, Fallik said, making some shootings more survivable.
The Kansas City Police Department began its “Stop the Bleed” training in 2017, and it has since been trained department-wide, DiMartino said. He said officers are carrying tourniquets and using them frequently.
Fallik was hesitant to create expectations around the Save KC initiative and how soon it would have a noticeable impact on gun violence in the city. This first year has been spent building the foundation, he said.
Fallik said they know the focus deterrence approach works, but how it will exactly work in Kansas City is yet to be determined.
“We have a foundation, but we got to build the house on top of it,” Mansur added.
While no number greater than zero is acceptable in terms of homicides, Fallik said it is important to convey the message that homicides are down.
“There’s still work to be done, particularly as it relates to these nonfatal shootings, but there’s promise,” Fallik said.
This story was originally published December 20, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
