(Image Source: Gun Violence Archive, Charts and Maps)
Gun violence is a public health crisis in the United States. According to a July 2023 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which was based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WONDER database, firearms were involved in more child deaths in 2020 and 2021 than any other cause (Matt McGough, Krutika Amin, & Nirmita Panchal, 2023). The United States has the highest rate of firearm mortality among children and teens compared to peer countries (U.S. has the highest rate of gun deaths for children and teens among peer countries, 2023).
The CDC data is useful, but there is a time lag associated with the availability of this data. For those looking to track the effects of gun violence in close to real-time, there is the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA). Media outlets, which rely on up-to-the-minute sources of data, have grown to depend on the detailed information about gun violence that is being continually compiled and updated by GVA for news reporting purposes.
While “gun violence” was established as a MeSH term only in 2019, GVA was established in 2013, by Mark Bryant and Michael Klein (Drenon, 2023). The GVA’s database contains gun violence incident reports collected from “over 7,500 law enforcement, media, government, and commercial sources daily in an effort to provide near-real-time data about the results of gun violence” (GVA, n.d.). GVA is unique, in that it is an independent data collection and research group with no affiliation with any advocacy organization.
Bryant, who runs the GVA from his home in Kentucky, might seem an unlikely founder of a research database on gun violence. As he told a BBC interviewer earlier this year, he began shooting at age five, and he has amassed a collection of guns passed along by family members. "Somebody has made the assumption that I'm doing this project that I must be against guns but lo and behold, I own guns," Bryant told the BBC, clarifying that his personal collection includes handguns, pistols, and revolvers – but no assault weapons. GVA initially began as a collaboration with Slate Magazine, because founder Bryant kept finding and reporting missing data in the daily tally of gun violence statistics that Slate began keeping following Sandy Hook (Matt Drange, 2016). GVA eventually emerged as an independent website with financial support from Michael Klein, founder of the now-defunct Sunlight Foundation, which strove to use civic technology, open data, policy analysis, and journalism in order to increase transparency and accountability in government and politics.
The GVA website is updated continuously, and an interactive map is associated with the incidents, the sources of which are included (typically local media reports). This searchable map includes statistics by date ranges on shootings including mass, accidental, officer-involved, child-involved, and fatal and non-fatal shootings from 2014-2022.
Data from the Gun Violence Archive underlies this interactive atlas of gun violence incidents in the United States, beginning with 2014 and current through the end of 2022. (Image source: The Trace, Gun Violence Archive)
Reports from GVA are available on a variety of topics, and can be exported as CSV documents or displayed as maps
References
Drange, Matt. (2016). The Kentucky gun owner who developed his own count of gun violence in the US. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/kentucky-gun-owner-gun-violence-archive-mark-bryant
Drenon, B. (2023). Mark Bryant counts US shootings. He no longer remembers the names. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305145
McGough, Matt, Krutika Amin, Nirmita Panchal, and Cynthia Cox (2023). Child and teen firearm mortality in the U.S. and peer countries. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
U.S. has the highest rate of gun deaths for children and teens among peer countries. (2023). Press Release. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/press-release/u-s-has-the-highest-rate-of-gun-deaths-for-children-and-teens-among-peer-countries/
