In 2014 around 3,438,482 Americans lived within 1 mile of a mass shooting event. That number is very high - especially when compared to most other countries around the world. However because of America's complete failure to control gun ownership that figure has now grown to a frightening 41,930,273.
This means that in 2023 over 12% of Americans live within one mile of a mass shooting.
These figures come from a powerful data visualization story from CNN. Interactive maps feature prominently in CNN's In the last decade, an estimated 40 million Americans lived within 1 mile of a mass shooting. One of these maps shows the number of people in America who have lived within one mile of a mass shooting for every year since 2014. The progressively higher number of people living near to mass shooting events powerfully demonstrates the growing trauma being caused by gun-crime in the USA.
The CNN story also includes an interactive map which allows you to enter your own address, to discover how near you live to a mass shooting event. The map shows the locations of all mass shooting events since Jan 1st 2014. Once you enter an address the map calculates the distance of your home (or work address) to the nearest of these mass shooting events.
CNN's maps use data from the Gun Violence Archive. The Gun Violence Archive reports that there have already been 488 mass shootings in the USA so far this year. To date 210 children have been killed by guns in 2023 and 482 children have been injured by guns.
The Mass Killing Database, a collaboration between Northeastern University and the Associated Press, tracks all multiple homicides in the United States since 2006 with four or more victims. According to the Mass Killing Database 2,939 people have lost their lives in mass killings since 2006. According to the database 2023 is on course to be another record year in the United States for the number of mass killings.
2 comments:
the most remarkable insight from this map is, that it is predominately the coastal, urban regions, mostly governed by Democrats and with more strict gun rules, which have a high density of mass shootings, and not -as one might initially expect- the redneck gunwielding, Republican, Second Amendment celebrating states...
It indicates that the living conditions, poverty, general crime rate, culture etc. have a much higher influence on the rate of mass shootings than gun laws.
@Keir Clarke: interesting consideration: do you mean that the likelyhood of shootings is equally distributed between all people and thus where the density of people is higher there is a higher chance of a mass shooting? Or do you mean that higher density of population causes more stress and thus increases the danger of someone snapping and becoming a mass shooter?
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