Using data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and from the World Health Organization, the data visualization firm Periscopic created an interactive visualization of gun deaths in the US in 2010.


The UCR are made up of voluntarily-reported data from police precincts across the country, and contain incident-level data, including information about the victim(s) (age, gender, race, relationship to killer, etc).  These data on US gun deaths were then combined by Periscopic with demographic data on average life expectancy to calculate “stolen years”, which captures the magnitude of loss from gun deaths: "we calculated alternate stories for the people killed with guns using data from the World Health Organization. To calculate an alternate story, we first performed an age prediction weighted according to the age distribution of US deaths. Using this age, we then predicted a likely cause of death at that age. We do not adjust for life-expectancy differences between demographic groups, as we have not yet found data to that extent. We used data from 2005, the most recent year available."

The interactive tool allows users to explore the data using variables such as gun type, race, gender, age, and relationship to killer.  It shows, for example, that in 2010 the majority of gun killings victims were male (85 percent), under the age of 30 (58 percent), black (57 percent), and killed by handguns (69 percent).  The data also show that eight percent of shootings involved multiple victims, and that only 17 percent of victims were killed by a stranger.



Read more:
http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2010
http://www.periscopic.com/our-company/

TeachingwithData.org resources:
Social Structure, Race/Ethnicity, and Homicide (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3118)
Gun Violence in America (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3864)
Generational Trends in Attitudes About Gun Ownership: A Data-Driven Learning Guide (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3448)
Crime Victimization in the US: A Data-Driven Learning Guide (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3437)
Deviance and Crime (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3059)
Regional Crime Analysis Geographic Information System (RCAGIS) (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3054)
CrimeStat III (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3055)
Crime and Victims Statistics (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3261)
Using Existing Statistics to Test Social Disorganization Theory (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3156)
Fear of Crime (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3155)