Where is the gun violence coming from?

A partisan look into 115th Congressional Districts.

the data

Gun related incidents were collected from Gun Violence Archive.
Congressional district shape files were gathered from the USAboundaries packages in R.
The partisanship between congressional districts can be found from the Cook Political Report.
Income inequality can be found on the United States Census website.

Congressional districts all have around 711,000 people. We could compare incidents between states, because gun laws are mostly a state matter, but examining congressional districts offer greater insight into the role of partisanship in this nation-wide issue.

These represent all police-recorded gun incidents from 2016-2018. Suicides are included, which make up a majority of the incidents. Note: suicides are included because in countries with guns, successful suicides are highly correlated with the availability of a firearm.

The Cook Index measures how each district voted in the past two elections. How much does each district lean towards it political affiliation? The higher the index number, the greater the political leaning of the respective district.

The gini index measures the concentration of wealth within a certain area. Is poverty the major factor in gun related incidents? It can be. Past studies and a preliminary look into the data show that areas in which the income distribution in similar, there are fewer crimes. This means that if everyone is within the same economic class, crime rates tend to drop. The gini index shows the economic disparity, so a higher index means that the poor will perceive themselves are poorer. Keep this in mind as we examine the data further. The higher the number, the greater the wealth is concentrated by fewer people.

115th Congress, 2016 - 2018

Incidents within Districts

The closer to the left, the fewer the number of incidents that occured. Success here is marked by having the highest bar on the far left. Here, we see that Republicans clearly win. There are more blue boxes towards the right, indicating that Democrats have the most dangerous districts.

Gun Violence by Income Inequality

Further towards the right marks a higher Gini index, indicating that these districts have the majority of their wealth concentrated between fewer people. The higher the dot is, the greater the number of incidents that occured. Again, we see fewer red dots on the higher end of the chart.

Incidents by Square Area

Pay close attention to the y-axis; the number of incidents for Democrats ends below 3000, while for Republicans it ends around 500. The further to the left, the smaller the square miles the district is, meaning there are more people in a small area. We see that the red dots extend further towards the right than the blue dots.

Expand viewport to see the district table

Gun Violence By 115th Congressional Districts