Phu Vo ECON 120: Economics of Crime March 27, 2026 Paper 4: Gun Violence in the United States (2014-2017)
For Project 4, I looked at gun violence patterns across the United States from 2014-2017, and observed how they varied across states and over time. The project covers national gun violence trend through 3 data visualizations with a hex-map, a heatmap showing time and date frequency of gun violence, and a bump chart ranking the top 10 most gun-violent states during the analyzed years. Washington, D.C., was excluded from the hex-map and bump chart because its crime rate resembles those of large cities, skewing analysis.
The data used comes from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization that compiles firearm-related incidents from law enforcement, media, government, and commercial sources nationwide, then independently verifies them. GVA defines a gun-related incident as “all incidents of death or injury or threat with firearms” (Gun Violence Archive, 2018). To supplement the dataset, the U.S. Census Bureau’s state population data was used to construct standardized measures of impact rate (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). It measures the raw counts of people injured/killed per 100,000 residents to compare across states with different population sizes.
The initial data-viz shows a hex-map of the United States displaying gun violence impact rates by state. While traditional maps suffer from the “Alaska Effect,” which creates distortions due to its disproportionately large size and location, the hex-map eliminates discrepancies in U.S. state sizes, alleviating the issue (Taylor, 2017). When observing the map, we see that despite highly populated states such as California and Texas reporting the largest number of total incidents, they are not necessarily the most impacted by gun violence. Rather, some states in the South– such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama appear consistently darker in the map, indicating greater per capita levels of gun violence. This could potentially be traced back to political origin, as Southern states are predominantly red, whose politics often have more lenient gun control laws (if any), but outliers such as Delaware, Maryland, and Illinois exist. This pattern could be explained by dense urban populations(i.e. Chicago and Baltimore) rather than broad statewide poverty differences. In class, we learned that organized crime and gang activity can be caused by local socioeconomic factors such as poverty and ethnic/social distance. As a result, state averages may reflect intense urban concentrations of violence despite generally restrictive state policy, which highlights the importance of geographical considerations with socio-political dynamics.
The second visualization uses a heatmap to examine the distribution of gun violence in a state by weekday and month. For each state, it counts the total number of firearm-related crimes on each day of the year, and sums the total number of crimes. Looking at the results, gun violence is not evenly distributed throughout the year. Instead, incidents are most frequent on the weekend, particularly from Friday through Sunday, and are more heavily concentrated during the summer months. For example, North Carolina averaged around 16 gun-related crimes per year between 2014-2017, but during Sundays and July, the average would equate to approximately 43 gun-related crimes per year– almost a 3 times increase. This pattern can be associated with criminological theory– violent crime increases during periods of greater social interaction, such as weekends, when people are more likely to gather and engage in activities that may elevate the likelihood of conflict. Summer months often increase unregulated outdoor activity, and lead to higher crime rates. This could be explained by young males no longer being in school, which is the demographic with the largest crime rate.
The final visualization is a bump chart which tracks the rankings of states by gun violence impact rate from 2014-2017. By using a line chart, the chart can emphasize relative rankings, which helps compare states on a per capita basis across time more easily. The top 10 states most impacted by gun violence are Louisiana, Illinois, Delaware, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Maryland, and Alaska– of which all 10 consistently remain in the top 10 throughout the 3 years. 7 of these states are historically red, and 8 of them are defined as geographically“Southern” by the U.S. Census, reinforcing patterns observed in the hex map (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). As the rankings do not fluctuate much, it suggests that gun violence is not randomly distributed across states but instead reflects persistent structural and policy-related issues. While both Canada and the U.S. have high gun-ownership, and both countries “set gun restrictions that the provinces, territories, and municipalities can supplement,” Canadian laws require all individuals to register firearms, and obtain licenses to buy guns and ammunition (Council on Foreign Relations, 2025). With a lack of a universal licensing requirement, gun laws significantly vary across states, leading to substantially more firearm ownership and gun-related deaths. This is reflected in the data– the U.S. owns almost 4 times more guns per 100 people than Canada, and has over 8 times the gun-homicide rate. My observed state, North Carolina, while not ranking in the top 10, has appeared at #13, #15, and #15 respectively, indicating that it experiences above-average levels of gun violence compared to the national distribution. North Carolina does not have certain foundational laws, such as required background check/purchase permit for handguns, extreme risk laws, prohibitions on assault weapons, open carry regulation, or required dealer licenses (Everytown, 2026). The state has moved towards more permissive policies, such as the 2023 repeal of its permit-to-purchase handgun (Everytown, 2026). Lawmakers have made multiple efforts to repeal several remaining gun safety protections. These changes reduces regulatory barriers to obtaining firearms and may contribute to higher rates of gun ownership and, potentially, gun-related incidents.
References
Council on Foreign Relations. (2025, October 13). U. S. Gun policy: Global comparisons. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/us-gun-policy-global-comparisons Everytown. (2026). Gun Laws in North Carolina. https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/state/north-carolina/ Gun Violence Archive (2018). “Gun Violence Data.” Collected via James Ko (Kaggle). US Census Bureau (2021). “State Population Totals: 2014-2017.” Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-state-total.html
Author’s Statement
During the write-up of Project 4, and the creation of the dashboard, no generative AI tools were used to assist with the production of this assignment. All research, writing, and revision were completely and independently done by me to develop foundational writing and research skills.