You've identified a problem with using human reports as a means to measure the number of shots fired, whereas the author suggests that some abstract "shots fired" count would be a better measure than homicides and injuries.
The author doesn't propose a suggested methodology for how to do so, but the metrics that he presents are from ShotSpotter deployments. These sorts of systems are designed to identify gunfire in particular, and so are presumably more reliable than monitoring 911 traffic.
Note that he identifies a number of other weaknesses with ShotSpotter-based data -- doesn't pick up indoor shots very well, and is of limited nationwide coverage, for example.
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator
Seeing as it can lead to fatalities to bystanders [1], I would be fine calling it "violent". [EDIT: "potentially violent" being perhaps a better term].
In my opinion, this is why at last gun education would be a good bipartisan way to reduce gun accidents (if not gun crime). If a police dispatcher does not think that firing into the air is serious problem and can kill people, that in itself is a big problem.
I was browsing the ShotSpotter website, and they have a paper that talks specifically about celebratory gunfire. [2]
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14616491
[2] http://www.shotspotter.com/system/content-uploads/MYTHS_abou...
No, I would say "violence" requires a certain intent, whereas firing shots into the air is merely ridiculously stupid and reckless.
I think (and this is where I probably differ from other people) that the discharge of a death-dealing weapon that is far deadlier than a gun or a knife implies at least a potential for violence. I guess I wouldn't go so far as to classify a death from it as actual violent crime though, which seems to be what you are driving at.
To explain this analogy a bit, if a drunk person is running down the street swinging a chainsaw for purposes of "celebrating" New Year, do you think he will be reported to the police as potentially violent? Why should drunks firing guns be different?
I happened to be working with a dispatcher in a 9-11 call center on the night the bin Laden raid was announced. Over the course of a couple hours, we fielded hundreds of "shots fired" calls, which mostly turned out to be people lighting off fireworks (sure, there were probably a few drunks firing into the air, but that's more reckless than violent).
If "gun violence" had been measured by these reports, the raw stats would suggest that the entire city had spontaneously erupted into a warzone, and then spontaneously returned to normal, all for no reason and without a single injury or death.
My point is that the author is advocating collecting statistics in a way that equates gang shootouts and backfiring cars as equal incidents of gun violence. The system is guaranteed to generate lots false positives, which will be used to bolster support for more surveillance and gun control. Not only is it _not_ a better way to measure gun violence, it's a proposition so fundamentally flawed that it borders on insanity.