US Mass Shooting 1: Shooter’s Analysis 1966-2019
- myht63
- Sep 22, 2020
- 3 min read
By My Ho
Cleaned Dataset (My Kaggle): click here
Cleaned Dataset (My Github): click here
The severity of mass shooting/gun violence and its effect on US families has always been a concern in US. To provide readers with more insight of this current affair based on data of typical cases from 1966 to 2019 in all over US regions, this analysis was written for such purpose.
While the previous analysis has mentioned US mass shooting 1966-2019 overview and root causes analysis, in this analysis I will focus on analysis of shooter’s characteristics and behaviors. Many assume mass shooters as sick, crazy, or mentally ill, but is it the actual story? Is it correct that most shooters are mentally sick? What are their behaviors in such affair? How is this affair like from data visualization?
This analysis using the same data source as US mass shooting 1966-2019 overview and root causes analysis or reader could find link to raw data in the beginning of this analysis.
Gender and Health Problem Factors Overview
About 34% shooters have mental health problems or historical data of mental health issue, 28% does not show mental health problem and the other 39% keep unknown (shooter committed suicide, got away before police came, and killed by police). (Figure 1)
Figure 1: Ratio of mental health illness cases with non-mental health
and unknown ones
In terms of gender, aggregated data from 1966-2019 shows 91.2% mass shooters are men in which 35.9% of male shooter has mental health problem, 35.28% unknown, and 28.8% does not have signs of mental health illness. (Figure 2)
Figure 2: Gender distribution with Mental Health Issues ratio on gender
Gender and Health Problem Factors Over Time Series
Over time series, while female, and cases from both male and female stay constant/slightly increase in a long period of time (Figure 3), male shooters are remarkably dominant and present in every single year from 1966 to 2019. Fa
Especially there is a sudden soar in 2015 and 2016 when number of mass shooting also reach its unexpected peak in the period from 1966-2019. (Figure 4)
Figure 4: Gender distribution over time series from 1966-2019
Mental health issue is almost always existed as one of reasons causing mass shooting. However, along cases with mental health issue, the ones with no mental health issue is also surging gradually starting from 1988 and dramatically increased in 2015. (figure 5) This raise a concern for tracking, identifying signs of potential shooters.
Another concern are unknown cases. Those cases are either shooters got away, ambiguous data does not mention of cases status or shooters committed suicide/got killed with unclear/no historical mental health records.
Figure 5: Shooters mental health status distribution 1966-2019
Age distribution and preferred incident areas
Excluding 39% of unknown cases, 3 most age range of mass shooters from most to least are 31 to 40, 21 to 30 and 11 to 20. Within those range, shooters in range from 31 to 40 tend to target more at home (friends’ houses, family members), neighborhood (dispute, argument, anger), and workplace including current and former workplace (work dispute). Shooters in range from 21 to 30 tend to target more at public area, bar clubs with random victims, friends or sometimes school (frustration, anger, terrorism). And those in range of 11 to 20 target remarkably at school due to frustration, anger and frustration. (Figure 6 +7)
Figure 6: Incident areas of mass shooting from 1966-2019 correlation with age (1)
Figure 7: Incident areas of mass shooting from 1966-2019 correlation with age (2)
Races
White, white American or European American mass shooters count for 45% of all mass shooters races. Within that they also have highest ratio of mental health issue cases (49%) comparing with non-mental health cases. Ranking number 2nd after that is black, black American or African American 30% and 19% of black, black American or African American has problem with health issues. (Figure 8)
Figure 8: Shooters race distribution 1966-2019
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