Why US Gun Violence Spikes In Warm Weather? Experts Say This

While there are many causes behind the rising tide of gun violence in US, weather could play an increasingly important role that is fast warming due to climate change.

From the Texas school massacre to a Tulsa hospital shooting and many less-reported incidents, a recent spate of gun violence across America bears out a trend police departments have long sworn by: murders go up in warmer weather.

The link has been written about for decades by criminologists, with more recent research drilling down on the precise relationship between temperature and crime rates.

For those who have studied the question, there are common sense as well as potentially less obvious mechanisms at play.

First, the more obvious: "It's hard to shoot somebody if there's nobody around," David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told AFP, explaining why gun crime is lower in bad weather.