This article is written for a course I am currently taking at Drexel University known as INFO250: Information Visualization. For my final project, I decided to create a visualization of a dataset from Mother Jones containing every mass shooting in America from 1982 to 2020.
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There is a powerful and pervasive narrative about violence in America that goes something like this:
“The United States has lots of guns, permissive gun laws, and lots of gun violence. Other countries have fewer guns, more restrictive gun laws, and far less gun violence. Therefore, if the United States wants to achieve lower levels of violence, it should enact stringent gun control policies.”
Background: The United States is notorious for its history of gun violence with more than 110 mass shootings since 1982. Compared to other countries, the US is in first place on the list that has the most civilians owning a gun with Yemen and Serbia as second and third, according to a 2018 Small Arms Survey. With the lack of rules and regulations when it comes to registering and owning a gun, the US has become deadlier over the years. For instance, the 2017 Las Vegas attack was the worst in recent US history with 58 people killed and more than 850 injured. Of the number of shootings, how many of them used a gun they legally obtained? With the number of shootings clustered in specific areas, why haven’t state legislators enacted more gun control laws?
Gun violence exacts an enormous toll on Americans — claiming tens of thousands of lives each year. Weak gun laws and unfettered access to firearms have made it far too easy for people to take their own lives and the lives of others. Gun violence shapes the fabric of our society, traumatizing millions and imposing substantial financial burdens that we all share. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36,000 Americans are killed by guns each year — an average of 100 per day. In 2017 alone, gun deaths reached their highest level in at least 40 years, with 39,773 deaths.
Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas, and Parkland
Some of the bloodiest and most notable U.S. mass shootings in this past decade (ranked by death toll) have created attention into how the laws and regulations around gun control should be modified
Sandy Hook: Dec. 14, 2012 — A man fatally shoots his mother, then kills 20 children and six adults before killing himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Las Vegas: Oct. 1, 2017 — A gunman opens fire on a country music festival from a 32nd-floor hotel suite, killing 58 people and wounding 564 others before taking his own life.
Parkland High School: Feb. 14, 2018 — A former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, opens fire with an assault-style rifle, killing 17 students and educators.
Mass Shooting Definition: The FBI and criminologists previously defined a mass shooting as a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed. In January 2013, a mandate for a federal investigation of mass shootings authorized by President Barack Obama lowered that baseline to three or more victims killed. So, a shooting is considered mass when an attacker had killed four or more victims in an indiscriminate rampage.
Contagion Effect & Mental Health
Recently a contagion effect, similar to a “copycat” effect, has been suggested in mass shootings. This effect suggests that behaviors can be “contagious” and spread across a population. In the example of mass shootings, a contagion effect would be said to exist if a single mass shooting incident increased the likelihood of other instances of mass shootings in the near future. Many factors could come into play for an individual to lash out like at the Las Vegas attack. Factors such as mental illnesses are often unfairly scapegoated following mass shootings in America. Could one’s mental health or criminal history play a factor in the perpetrator’s behavior?
The following graph showcases the questions raised from earlier.
Mass Shootings in America from 1982–2020
Graph Design
The design for this dataset will be in the format of an interactive infographic where the user can scroll over, click, and expand the onscreen data. The graph type will be a geographical map of the U.S only because this dataset only holds information about the U.S. I used Tableau as the tool for going about this visualization. This interactive map will allow the users to zoom in/out into the areas for a clearer description of the event details. The data variables I used are:
1. Longitude & Latitude 🌐
2. Total number of victims (injured and fatalities)😢
3. The Date 📅
4. Location 📍
5. Summary 📄
6. Mental Health Details 🧠
7. Whether the weapon was obtained legally or illegally 🔫
Changes I made after the initial design and why:
I added a filter feature for users to have a more focused view of a featured layer on the map. For instance, if the user wanted to see a collective set of shootings from 2016 to 2018, they have that ability. So, with this filter option, users can see a broader view of the number of shootings or a more in-detail setting for a specific year. This filter will allow users to see how mass shootings have changed over time.
The most and least useful aspects of this course
The most useful parts of the course for me:
1️⃣ The basic types of visual patterns help set up the foundations of different data values used for graphs 📊📉📈
2️⃣ The demonstrations on how to use Tableau and the exercises that go with it really helped me be familiar with a popular data visualization tool used in the industry. It can create complex graphs giving a similar feel as the pivot table graphs in Excel.
3️⃣️ Schneiderman’s list of visualization user tasks 🔍 offers context to the interactive components a data visualization can engage users
The least useful parts of the course for me:
1️⃣ I wouldn’t say it is “least useful,” but the ⏰ timing of learning ggplot2 in the course was later than I wanted. What I mean by this is that I wish we could have learned and practiced ggplot2 sooner in the course than near the final weeks because it would have given us more time to explore and manipulate datasets. Because I was exposed to Tableau earlier in the course, I had extra time to play around with it for the final projects.
