11 ms·

Gun Deaths in America (Data Visualization)

40 points by johnny313 9y ago

dmoy 9y ago
Ah if you're on a small screen, make sure to be scrolled sufficiently up to the top before clicking through, or it'll be real confusing.
grecy 9y ago
It would be interesting to see this as per-capita statistics, then compared to OECD countries.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Not quite the same data, and a few years out of date, but a really striking graph: http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-country/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-cou... (those figures are "death from assault", which covers more sorts of violence but excludes suicides. The OP article includes suicides.)
- dmix 9y ago
  Agreed. Although to draw conclusions from high-level stats like this it's necessary to drill down into the data. For example, I'd be curious if you could isolate the 'ghettos' in all the US/Canadian/European cities and allow you to toggle them within the stats to compare all the countries. People tend to talk about the unique US obsession with firearms - which is true, but the core problem is gun violence, and the amount of violence happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique among western countries. And I wouldn't be surprised if it accounted for a significant percentage of 'mass shootings' (not just the type in Vegas but as the FBI defines them with >=4 victims). Generalizing about the US gun problem as a singular 'gun problem' doesn't do them any favours. These problems won't ever be effectively confronted as a generic problem if it's multiple groups of with different cultures, incentives, circumstances, etc. People in the US have been obsessing for decades over a politically (and practically) dead options such as national gun control laws or more harsh gun sentencing as the only solutions - while missing opportunities to confront this as the nuanced individual community or cultural problem it is. Much like the drug war, there's no panacea solution in law enforcement.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Mass shootings in particular are mostly a white phenomenon: https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in...
    - dmix 9y ago
      That graph only adds up to 90 shootings. There are far more mass shootings than that, especially over such a large timespan. What is the source of that data? But I wouldn't be surprised if they are still #1, as they are 78% of the population. Edit: the source was Mother Jones, which only lists 92 mass shootings: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... The FBI listed 1,518 mass shootings in 2012...
  - grecy 9y ago
    I believe the first step to fixing a problem is to identify and admit there is a problem. Namely, there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita than other countries that it is supposed to be a peer of (OECD countries) > but the extreme violence happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique among western countries. It sounds like you are suggesting you would like to exclude the US ghettos from the data... does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would you say then there is no need to fix the problem there? I am really not following your reasoning. The US has a major, major problem that needs to be fixed.
    - dmix 9y ago
      > does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would you say then there is no need to fix the problem there? Where did I say anything close to that? I merely said the problems need to be analyzed and confronted on a culture-by-culture basis, not treated as a singular 'US gun problem'. The US is a big, highly varied country and those gun deaths have varied causes and root problems. > there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita Averaging out via per capita across the country is a useless statistic, in terms of actually confronting the issue, if there are massively disproportionate events in certain areas or sub-demographics with different incentives, causes, etc. Legal gun control is not the only way to solve this problem. Especially given the US's unique legal history with firearms, current ownership rates, and the fact they are the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter of firearms. Even if they did a total ban on legal firearm sales to civilians there's still billions of guns in the country... there has to be more than that. And yet I see plenty of people perfectly satisfied with their politically-dead panacea solution.
daxorid 9y ago
This appears to require WebGL. If you, like me, are wondering where this alleged interactive graph is, you likely are lacking WebGL support.
microcolonel 9y ago
> The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very different, and that means the solutions must be, too. I'd like to thank Ben, Matthew, and Reuben for saying this. It's fashionable to say you have one solution to a broad set of different problems, but it is rare that such a solution actually works out.
RandomBookmarks 9y ago
"The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very different, and that means the solutions must be, too." Nonsense... Proof: Any other country that has introduced strict gun control. It makes all the numbers go down.
- jkoll 9y ago
  Gun violence decreases, but violence as a whole does not.
  - Gys 9y ago
    Source ?
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    When gun violence decreases, fatalities decrease. A violent attack without a gun is less like to result in fatalities. A suicide attempt without a gun is less likely to result in a fatality, and so on.
    - JCzynski 9y ago
      Source? Murder rates didn't drop below trend.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8b5a7f/image.jpg https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8... http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/figure_13.png http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/...
  - GuiA 9y ago
    The second chart you posted has no labels, title, or context, and as such is pretty useless.
  - wbc 9y ago
gt_ 9y ago
'Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides' and '85% of suicides are male' but does it mean to purport that 85% of "gun suicides" are male or not? The visualization represents this but the statistics given don't specify. It's misleading and I am curious. It's hard for me to believe that 85% of all suicides are male but it is easy for me to believe that 85% of all gun suicides are male.
- pjc50 9y ago
  I think it's missing a "those". By the way, we could probably do with a content warning somewhere for this subject. https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ "Females attempt suicide twice as often as males. As with suicide deaths, rates of attempted suicide vary considerably among demographic groups. While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt suicide 3 times as often as males. The ratio of suicide attempts to suicide death in youth is estimated to be about 25:1, compared to about 4:1 in the elderly"
- jupiter90000 9y ago
  Suicide rate by any method for males in US at least is 4 times higher than that of females. So maybe more around 80% of suicides in US are male but still quite a disparity. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.sht...
unethical_ban 9y ago
Suicide: 22,000 Gang warfare: 6,000 Other homicides and accidents: 5,000 Yes, the answers (or lack thereof) depend on the cause. The common sense gun control for which our late night comedians are pleaing will be very different depending on the type of violence. It would be refreshing for all of the ideas being pitched by gun control advocates were ranked by feasibility, effectiveness per cause of death, and legality. I wish the "explore for yourself" section included numbers and filters for the data explored in the "slides", such as police involved fatalities and mass shootings.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Where do you get the "gang warfare" breakout number from?
  - gremlinsinc 9y ago
    I'm guessing they're ASS-uming all black deaths are gang warfare...
    - unethical_ban 9y ago
      Let me be clear that all deaths are significant and we should work to reduce them where possible, and with minimal reduction in the liberty of all. I do believe that most of the deaths cited in that "young black men" metric are somehow related to drug trade and gang violence. Let's zip on up to Chicago for some reinforcement of that. Also - not all death in that category is "gang member gets what they deserve" - I'm not saying that. I'm ASSuming it's related, though.
- harryf 9y ago
  There's also another dimension to this - reports tend to focus on gun related _death_ but ignores injuries where the victim survived. This chart - http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/gun_gray.jpg http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/gun_gray.jpg - from http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun-violence-in-america/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun... suggests the total number of gun related injuries + deaths in 2012 was ~120,000
post_break 9y ago
I'd like to see this compared with heroin deaths for the same period. I think the 2015 number for heroin over dose is around 33,000 too.
jff 9y ago
Well, it's been flagged. Didn't match what everyone on HN already knows to be true, so it's gotta go.
- ythn 9y ago
  I flagged because I see this politicized crap on every single social media and news platform, and I'd like HN to be a bastion for just tech news and tech conversation. I don't want to know the political alignment of whoever I'm talking to on HN, I want the conversation to be about tech. That said, I thought this was a good article, I just don't think it belongs on HN.

40 points by johnny313 9y ago

dmoy 9y ago

Ah if you're on a small screen, make sure to be scrolled sufficiently up to the top before clicking through, or it'll be real confusing.

grecy 9y ago

It would be interesting to see this as per-capita statistics, then compared to OECD countries.

pjc50 9y ago
Not quite the same data, and a few years out of date, but a really striking graph: http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-country/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-cou... (those figures are "death from assault", which covers more sorts of violence but excludes suicides. The OP article includes suicides.)
dmix 9y ago
Agreed. Although to draw conclusions from high-level stats like this it's necessary to drill down into the data. For example, I'd be curious if you could isolate the 'ghettos' in all the US/Canadian/European cities and allow you to toggle them within the stats to compare all the countries. People tend to talk about the unique US obsession with firearms - which is true, but the core problem is gun violence, and the amount of violence happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique among western countries. And I wouldn't be surprised if it accounted for a significant percentage of 'mass shootings' (not just the type in Vegas but as the FBI defines them with >=4 victims). Generalizing about the US gun problem as a singular 'gun problem' doesn't do them any favours. These problems won't ever be effectively confronted as a generic problem if it's multiple groups of with different cultures, incentives, circumstances, etc. People in the US have been obsessing for decades over a politically (and practically) dead options such as national gun control laws or more harsh gun sentencing as the only solutions - while missing opportunities to confront this as the nuanced individual community or cultural problem it is. Much like the drug war, there's no panacea solution in law enforcement.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Mass shootings in particular are mostly a white phenomenon: https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in...
  - dmix 9y ago
    That graph only adds up to 90 shootings. There are far more mass shootings than that, especially over such a large timespan. What is the source of that data? But I wouldn't be surprised if they are still #1, as they are 78% of the population. Edit: the source was Mother Jones, which only lists 92 mass shootings: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... The FBI listed 1,518 mass shootings in 2012...
- grecy 9y ago
  I believe the first step to fixing a problem is to identify and admit there is a problem. Namely, there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita than other countries that it is supposed to be a peer of (OECD countries) > but the extreme violence happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique among western countries. It sounds like you are suggesting you would like to exclude the US ghettos from the data... does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would you say then there is no need to fix the problem there? I am really not following your reasoning. The US has a major, major problem that needs to be fixed.
  - dmix 9y ago
    > does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would you say then there is no need to fix the problem there? Where did I say anything close to that? I merely said the problems need to be analyzed and confronted on a culture-by-culture basis, not treated as a singular 'US gun problem'. The US is a big, highly varied country and those gun deaths have varied causes and root problems. > there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita Averaging out via per capita across the country is a useless statistic, in terms of actually confronting the issue, if there are massively disproportionate events in certain areas or sub-demographics with different incentives, causes, etc. Legal gun control is not the only way to solve this problem. Especially given the US's unique legal history with firearms, current ownership rates, and the fact they are the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter of firearms. Even if they did a total ban on legal firearm sales to civilians there's still billions of guns in the country... there has to be more than that. And yet I see plenty of people perfectly satisfied with their politically-dead panacea solution.

daxorid 9y ago

This appears to require WebGL. If you, like me, are wondering where this alleged interactive graph is, you likely are lacking WebGL support.

microcolonel 9y ago

> The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very different, and that means the solutions must be, too. I'd like to thank Ben, Matthew, and Reuben for saying this. It's fashionable to say you have one solution to a broad set of different problems, but it is rare that such a solution actually works out.

RandomBookmarks 9y ago

"The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very different, and that means the solutions must be, too." Nonsense... Proof: Any other country that has introduced strict gun control. It makes all the numbers go down.

jkoll 9y ago
Gun violence decreases, but violence as a whole does not.
- Gys 9y ago
  Source ?
- pwinnski 9y ago
  When gun violence decreases, fatalities decrease. A violent attack without a gun is less like to result in fatalities. A suicide attempt without a gun is less likely to result in a fatality, and so on.
  - JCzynski 9y ago
    Source? Murder rates didn't drop below trend.
microcolonel 9y ago
https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8b5a7f/image.jpg https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8... http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/figure_13.png http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/...
- GuiA 9y ago
  The second chart you posted has no labels, title, or context, and as such is pretty useless.
- wbc 9y ago

gt_ 9y ago

'Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides' and '85% of suicides are male' but does it mean to purport that 85% of "gun suicides" are male or not? The visualization represents this but the statistics given don't specify. It's misleading and I am curious. It's hard for me to believe that 85% of all suicides are male but it is easy for me to believe that 85% of all gun suicides are male.

pjc50 9y ago
I think it's missing a "those". By the way, we could probably do with a content warning somewhere for this subject. https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ "Females attempt suicide twice as often as males. As with suicide deaths, rates of attempted suicide vary considerably among demographic groups. While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt suicide 3 times as often as males. The ratio of suicide attempts to suicide death in youth is estimated to be about 25:1, compared to about 4:1 in the elderly"
jupiter90000 9y ago
Suicide rate by any method for males in US at least is 4 times higher than that of females. So maybe more around 80% of suicides in US are male but still quite a disparity. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.sht...

unethical_ban 9y ago

Suicide: 22,000 Gang warfare: 6,000 Other homicides and accidents: 5,000 Yes, the answers (or lack thereof) depend on the cause. The common sense gun control for which our late night comedians are pleaing will be very different depending on the type of violence. It would be refreshing for all of the ideas being pitched by gun control advocates were ranked by feasibility, effectiveness per cause of death, and legality. I wish the "explore for yourself" section included numbers and filters for the data explored in the "slides", such as police involved fatalities and mass shootings.

pjc50 9y ago
Where do you get the "gang warfare" breakout number from?
- gremlinsinc 9y ago
  I'm guessing they're ASS-uming all black deaths are gang warfare...
  - unethical_ban 9y ago
    Let me be clear that all deaths are significant and we should work to reduce them where possible, and with minimal reduction in the liberty of all. I do believe that most of the deaths cited in that "young black men" metric are somehow related to drug trade and gang violence. Let's zip on up to Chicago for some reinforcement of that. Also - not all death in that category is "gang member gets what they deserve" - I'm not saying that. I'm ASSuming it's related, though.
harryf 9y ago
There's also another dimension to this - reports tend to focus on gun related _death_ but ignores injuries where the victim survived. This chart - http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/gun_gray.jpg http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/gun_gray.jpg - from http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun-violence-in-america/ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/true-cost-of-gun... suggests the total number of gun related injuries + deaths in 2012 was ~120,000

post_break 9y ago

I'd like to see this compared with heroin deaths for the same period. I think the 2015 number for heroin over dose is around 33,000 too.

jff 9y ago

Well, it's been flagged. Didn't match what everyone on HN already knows to be true, so it's gotta go.

ythn 9y ago
I flagged because I see this politicized crap on every single social media and news platform, and I'd like HN to be a bastion for just tech news and tech conversation. I don't want to know the political alignment of whoever I'm talking to on HN, I want the conversation to be about tech. That said, I thought this was a good article, I just don't think it belongs on HN.