Trends and Impact of Gun Violence

    In the article, “Here’s How Gun Control Works in Canada,” the author explains how gun control laws in Canada are among some of the strictest in the world. Canada at a minimum requires ongoing training, licensing, and has stringent background checks for those who wish to own and operate a weapon. Likewise, Canada has laws that require individuals who own firearms to keep their weapons and ammunition in separate locked areas . To compare to the American system, “Canada treats gun ownership more like driving a car — a privilege you earn, not a right you're born with” (Matthews, 2014).

    These laws have restricted access for Canadians and limits the number of weapons that are owned within the Canadian provinces. Gun ownership per capita is lower in Canada than in the United States, contributing to the relative lack of gun related crimes within the country. These gun laws in Canada and the culture of Canadian gun ownership helps to explain why there are fewer gun related deaths in the provinces than there are in the United States. 

    In contrast, the state of Florida only implemented in 2018 an “Extreme Risk Law” which allows law enforcement and family members to “petition for a court order to temporarily prevent someone in crisis from accessing guns” (Everytown Research Policy, 2025). This state, while showing progress in some areas, still does not have universal background checks. Florida has responded to societal pressure and implemented age restrictions on purchasing weapons, however, recent legislation efforts have been started to roll back those initiatives.  As stated in class before, this difference in firearm ownership can be broken down in two ways: Canada is seen as a privilege, in contrast, Florida, and in broader terms, the United States, firearms ownership is seen as a Constitutional right. This can be traced to the cultural understanding of what guns are to the American citizen. 

    For the first visualization, entitled “Total Impact of Gun Violence per 100,000”, the total number of gun incidents (the number of people injured or killed by gun violence)  in Florida divided by the state's population and times by 100,000. This allows for the data to be normalized and compared against the data between a number of states. It also accounts for the extreme outliers of gun incidents in places like Louisiana, Alaska, and Illinois. 

     The second visualization, entitled “The Top Ten States Impacted by Gun Violence” tracks the top ten states in gun violence. This included the number of people injured and killed in those states. This is broken down annually from 2014-2017 and gives a top ten in each year. 

    The final visualization is entitled, “Frequency of Gun Violence in (State) by Day of the Week and Month”. The structure of the visual shows the day of the week and months and the impact of gun violence on that particular day in a particular month. The purpose of this visual is  that it reveals temporal patterns on how and when gun violence occurs, creating an opportunity to study the trends of gun violence during the day, week, and month. 

    As discussed in class, we learned how guns can serve as a private investment in security and how they are potentially used  in crimes. We also talked about how guns are used in 78.9% of all murders in the United States, demonstrating the impact of gun violence on American life. Finally, as we discussed, authorities can approach the ongoing issue of gun violence through programs like the “gun buy-back” potentially getting illegal weapons off of American streets. 

    Florida’s gun violence in comparison to other states consistently put it close to or in the top ten of states with the most gun violence. For example, between 2014-2017, Florida averaged about 13 out of 100,000 residents were affected directly by gun violence. This is low compared to the 100,000 rate, but still puts Florida in the high middle of gun violence impact. In total impact of gun violence rate, Florida has remained around the 7th spot but did peak at 6th in the 2016. This frequency and gun violence by day, week, and month, point to trends consistent across many states. For example, gun violence was most high on weekends and from May to July. 

    Overall, the United States compared to most other modern first-world countries is dramatically higher in gun ownership. This, in turn, creates a population that is more impacted by gun violence than any other population in the modern world. In fact, “Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed by a gun than people in other high-income countries.”(Grinshteyn & Hemenway, 2016). This clearly points to a culture that looks at gun ownership as a right, not a privilege.

 

 

 

References

Everytown for Gun Safety. (n.d.). Florida gun laws. Everytown Research & Policy. Retrieved 

from https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/state/florida/

Grinshteyn, E., & Hemenway, D. (2016). Violent death rates: The US compared with other 

high-income OECD countries, 2010. The American Journal of Medicine, 129(3), 266–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025

Gun Violence Archive. (n.d.). Methodology. Retrieved from 

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology

Ko, J. (n.d.). Gun violence data [Data set]. Kaggle. Retrieved from 

https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/jamesko/gun-violence-data

Lopez, G. (2014, October 24). Canada has way fewer gun-related homicides than the US. Why? 

Vox.https://www.vox.com/2014/10/24/7047547/canada-gun-law-us-comparison

U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). State population totals and components of change: 2010–2019. 

Retrieved from 

https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-state-total.html