
Gun Deaths in America (Data Visualization) - johnny313
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/
======
unethical_ban

        Suicide: 22,000    
        Gang warfare: 6,000    
        Other homicides and accidents: 5,000    
    

Yes, the answers (or lack thereof) depend on the cause. The common sense gun
control for which our late night comedians are pleaing will be very different
depending on the type of violence. It would be refreshing for all of the ideas
being pitched by gun control advocates were ranked by feasibility,
effectiveness per cause of death, and legality.

I wish the "explore for yourself" section included numbers and filters for the
data explored in the "slides", such as police involved fatalities and mass
shootings.

~~~
liberte82
I'd submit that reducing gun death suicides is not an unworthy cause. Not
everyone who would commit suicide with a gun will proceed with a different
method. Guns can offer a fast and easy solution to suicide that a person
without that access may need to sleep on, and eventually choose to reach out
and find help instead.

~~~
sliken
Not really, there's plenty of things easier than buying a gun. Rope, non-
prescription drugs, bridges, etc.

If you look at suicide rates world wide USA is one of the lower rates. Even
those countries with MUCH stricter gun laws have more suicides.

------
grecy
It would be interesting to see this as per-capita statistics, then compared to
OECD countries.

~~~
dmix
Agreed. Although to draw conclusions from high-level stats like this it's
necessary to drill down into the data. For example, I'd be curious if you
could isolate the 'ghettos' in all the US/Canadian/European cities and allow
you to toggle them within the stats to compare all the countries.

People tend to talk about the unique US obsession with firearms - which is
true, but the core problem is gun violence, and the amount of violence
happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique among western countries. And
I wouldn't be surprised if it accounted for a significant percentage of 'mass
shootings' (not just the type in Vegas but as the FBI defines them with >=4
victims).

Generalizing about the US gun problem as a singular 'gun problem' doesn't do
them any favours. These problems won't ever be effectively confronted as a
generic problem if it's multiple groups of with different cultures,
incentives, circumstances, etc. People in the US have been obsessing for
decades over a politically (and practically) dead options such as national gun
control laws or more harsh gun sentencing as the only solutions - while
missing opportunities to confront this as the nuanced individual community or
cultural problem it is. Much like the drug war, there's no panacea solution in
law enforcement.

~~~
grecy
I believe the first step to fixing a problem is to identify and admit there is
a problem. Namely, there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita than
other countries that it is supposed to be a peer of (OECD countries)

> _but the extreme violence happening in the US ghettos is also highly unique
> among western countries._

It sounds like you are suggesting you would like to exclude the US ghettos
from the data... does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would
you say then there is no need to fix the problem there?

I am really not following your reasoning. The US has a major, major problem
that needs to be fixed.

~~~
dmix
> does that mean you would exclude them from the problem? would you say then
> there is no need to fix the problem there?

Where did I say anything close to that? I merely said the problems need to be
analyzed and confronted on a culture-by-culture basis, not treated as a
singular 'US gun problem'.

The US is a big, highly varied country and those gun deaths have varied causes
and root problems.

> there are a LOT more gun deaths in the US per capita

Averaging out via per capita across the country is a useless statistic, in
terms of actually confronting the issue, if there are massively
disproportionate events in certain areas or sub-demographics with different
incentives, causes, etc.

Legal gun control is not the only way to solve this problem. Especially given
the US's unique legal history with firearms, current ownership rates, and the
fact they are the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter of firearms.

Even if they did a total ban on legal firearm sales to civilians there's still
billions of guns in the country... there _has_ to be more than that. And yet I
see plenty of people perfectly satisfied with their politically-dead panacea
solution.

~~~
grecy
> _The US is a big, highly varied country_

I hear this excuse over and over and over.

Do you somehow think the US is unique in this situation?

Do you think Australia is homogeneous? (way, way more per-capita immigration)

Do you think if you remove those "ghettos" from the US stats AND the stats of
other first world countries you will suddenly see the US leap ahead?

~~~
dmix
> Do you think Australia is homogeneous? (way, way more per-capita
> immigration)

There have been plenty of studies that show immigration to poor US
neighbourhoods _reduces_ violence [1]. I don't fully understand what you're
suggesting here?

I'm from Toronto, we have tons of legal immigrants and while some carry
violence over from their countries (gun violence is a big problem in Somali
[2] and Jamaican enclaves here) but otherwise it's extremely safe, likely
_thanks_ to immigrants not in spite of them.

The article I linked even suggests the best solution they found in Minnesota
and Toronto for reducing gun violence was hiring Somalis to go into Somali
neighbourhoods to increase inter-community reporting and educate kids - which
supports what I said about approaching this on a cultural basis. Not as a
general 'gun problem'.

> Do you think if you remove those "ghettos" from the US stats AND the stats
> of other first world countries you will suddenly see the US leap ahead?

I can't tell if you're trolling or not... I tried to answer your other highly
suggestive questions already but I don't think I could take any more of these
seriously.

[1]
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Immigration_and_crime](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Immigration_and_crime)

[2] [https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-so-
many-s...](https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-so-many-somali-
canadians-who-go-west-end-up-
dead/article4365992/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&)

------
RandomBookmarks
"The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very
different, and that means the solutions must be, too."

Nonsense... Proof: Any other country that has introduced strict gun control.
It makes all the numbers go down.

~~~
microcolonel
[https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8...](https://static.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8b5a7f/image.jpg)
[http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/...](http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2006/figure_13.png)

~~~
dmix
Gun deaths went down in the US at a similar pace as the Australian graph,
without any significant gun control... [http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/3/201...](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/3/2013/05/SDT-2013-05-gun-crime-1-2.png)

~~~
lawtguy
Your chart is gun deaths per 100,000 but the other chart posted was total gun
deaths in Australia, so that's not a fair comparison. Here's the gun deaths
per 100,000 for Australia:
[http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_al...](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_all_gun_deaths_per_100_000_people).
You can see from the chart that both the US and Australia show a significant
drop in the 1990s. The US levels off by 2000, but Australia keeps dropping
through about 2005. It's entirely possible that the further drop could be due
to Australia's 1996 gun law.

~~~
microcolonel
> _It 's entirely possible that the further drop could be due to Australia's
> 1996 gun law._

Since the trendline is basically the same until it tapers off around 2003,
it's hard to say; but since the trend is identical (and identically noisy)
before and after 1996, it is unlikely it had any effect. You would expect an
increase in the trend if it did.

Especially when you compare this to the identical trend in the U.S.[0] and
Canada[1] at the time, it's hard to make a case that any effect was
experienced.

Homicide in western countries just sorta trended downward since the mid '80s
until the early 0ughts.

See:

[http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_gu...](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_gun_homicide)

Or more importantly, see:

[http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_ho...](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_homicide_any_method)

[0]:
[http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/194/rate_of_h...](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/194/rate_of_homicide_any_method)

[1]:
[http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/31/rate_of_ho...](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/31/rate_of_homicide_any_method)

------
gt_
'Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides' and '85% of suicides are male'
but does it mean to purport that 85% of "gun suicides" are male or not? The
visualization represents this but the statistics given don't specify. It's
misleading and I am curious. It's hard for me to believe that 85% of all
suicides are male but it is easy for me to believe that 85% of all _gun
suicides_ are male.

~~~
pjc50
I think it's missing a "those". By the way, we could probably do with a
content warning somewhere for this subject.

[https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/](https://afsp.org/about-
suicide/suicide-statistics/)

"Females attempt suicide twice as often as males. As with suicide deaths,
rates of attempted suicide vary considerably among demographic groups. While
males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt
suicide 3 times as often as males. The ratio of suicide attempts to suicide
death in youth is estimated to be about 25:1, compared to about 4:1 in the
elderly"

------
dmoy
Ah if you're on a small screen, make sure to be scrolled sufficiently up to
the top before clicking through, or it'll be real confusing.

------
post_break
I'd like to see this compared with heroin deaths for the same period. I think
the 2015 number for heroin over dose is around 33,000 too.

------
daxorid
This appears to require WebGL. If you, like me, are wondering where this
alleged interactive graph is, you likely are lacking WebGL support.

------
jff
Well, it's been flagged. Didn't match what everyone on HN already _knows_ to
be true, so it's gotta go.

~~~
ythn
I flagged because I see this politicized crap on _every single_ social media
and news platform, and I'd like HN to be a bastion for just tech news and tech
conversation. I don't want to know the political alignment of whoever I'm
talking to on HN, I want the conversation to be about tech.

That said, I thought this was a good article, I just don't think it belongs on
HN.

------
microcolonel
> _The common element in all these deaths is a gun. But the causes are very
> different, and that means the solutions must be, too._

I'd like to thank Ben, Matthew, and Reuben for saying this.

It's fashionable to say you have one solution to a broad set of different
problems, but it is rare that such a solution actually works out.

