I was curious about whether dollar stores are really a magnet for crime based on this article. Just looking up the stores on Wikipedia to get their location co

I was curious about whether dollar stores are really a magnet for crime based on this article. Just looking up the stores on Wikipedia to get their location counts I found that there were 15,115 Dollar Tree (Family Dollar) stores and 16,278 Dollar Generals. When I looked up a Dollar General in St. Louis on Google Maps I saw there was a McDonald's right next to it. Wikipedia says there are 37,855 McDonald's - which isn't great because that number is worldwide locations. Statista says 14,339[1] locations in the US as of 2014. The article also mentions Wendy's which has 6,711 locations according to Wikipedia. Walgreen's is a store that's kind of like a Dollar Store in that it isn't a restaurant, you walk around and buy things from shelves. There are 9,277 Walgreen's according to Wikipedia. The author's method of counting gun crimes in dollar stores seems to be using the Gun Violence Archive[2]. "The Gun Violence Archive, a website that uses local news reports and law enforcement sources to tally crimes involving firearms, lists more than 200 violent incidents involving guns at Family Dollar or Dollar General". I searched the GVA for "Family Dollar" or "Dollar General" and found 465 incidents with 126 deaths. With 31,393 combined locations this is 0.015 incidents and 0.004 deaths per location for the 7 year time period. I searched the GVA for "McDonalds" or "McDonald's" and found 534 incidents and 148 deaths. With 14,339 US locations this is 0.0372 incidents per store and 0.01 deaths per store for the 7 year time period. Approximately 2.5 times the incidents and deaths per location of the Dollar Stores. I searched the GVA for "Wendys" or "Wendy's" and found 104 incidents with 27 deaths. This is 0.0155 incidents per location and 0.004 deaths per location. This is approximately equal to the Dollar Stores. I searched the GVA for "Walgreens" or "Walgreen's" and found 180 incidents and 53 deaths. This is 0.019 incidents per store and 0.0057 deaths per store for the 7 year period. This 1.3 times as many incidents and 1.4 times the deaths of the Dollar Stores. My interpretation of this is that the Gun Violence Archive is probably not a great way to estimate violence. For example, I also searched the GVA for "Advance America" - one of the largest payday loans places in the US and found only a single incident whereas just Googling "Advance America shooting" turns up more than 1 distinct incident. Generally, it seems implausible to me that McDonald's or Walgreen's, which are widely distributed across the US, has 2.5 or 1.4 times the incident and death rate compared to the Dollar Stores or to Wendy's. If that's accurate, maybe it should be the next article! Regardless, given that the GVA is the author's tool of choice, from my use of it, it doesn't seem justified to call out Dollar Stores as being especially violent. Wendy's is seemingly just as bad and McDonald's is worse. Unless I'm missing something, I think this article was interesting to read, but ultimately misleading. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/256040/mcdonalds-restaurants-in-north-america/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/256040/mcdonalds-restaur... 2 - https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/