Rough Draft: This is just to show where my thoughts are heading
Ciero Kilpatrick DAT8
Predicting Important Factors in Mass shootings in the U.S.
(1.1) Problem Statement - Problem statement and hypothesis - Preface D.C. reached it’s 100th homicide for 2015 on the morning of August 22nd shortly after 3am. At this time in 2014, the homicide count was only at 72. First instincts may be to examine this spike in murder from a local perspective, which was what I did at first, trying to figure out what local factors would cause such an increase. Across the U.S. murder, and crime in general has risen, particularly in cities that have high-profile cases of African-American deaths, for instance, Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, and Freddie Grey in Baltimore. Actually, for 2015, many cities have already passed their homicide rates. What doesn’t help this situation are the numbers of mass shootings. According to The Washington Post, The U.S. has had 294 mass shootings across the country within 274 days of this year, with the Oregon community-college shooting to be that last so far. There seems to be an unrest across the country that stems from many factors more so than just the state of civil rights and race relations. In D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has launched an initiative to sweep illegal guns off of the streets. However, Urban Institute reports from Mother Jones’ US Mass shooting data that 77% of firearms used in mass shootings are using data sets obtained legally. The goal of this project is to find better predictive features for mass shootings, in hopes to create and propose better prevention strategies. (1.2) Problem Statement - Problem statement and hypothesis Can I predict the size of a mass shooting based on features of the shooter and the environment (city, state, region, mental health, weapon, weapon legally obtained) My original hypothesis was was that the legal state of an obtained weapon would be a strong indicator of the size of the shooting. I lean now to region and mental health being strongest predictive factors.
(2.1) Description of your data set and how it was obtained I’m am using data sets from primarily two online sources: US Mass Shootings, 1982-2015: Data From Mother Jones' Investigation The US Mother Jones Data began getting collected after the Aurora mass shooting in 2012. The contributors investigated mass shooting all the way back to 1982, and has been updated to October 2nd (Oregon). Features from this data being used will be Location, Venue of Shooting, Summary of Incident, Type of Weapon, Whether weapon was legally obtained, Mental Health, Number of Victims.
Mass Shooting Tracker’s Mass Shooting List
Mass Shooting Tracker data will be used to supplement the primary data to help gain a better understanding of features. It specifically brings to attention the difference between a mass murder and a mass shooting, limiting the definition of a mass shooting to the one place where the shooting occurs, and not a spree or murder necessarily involved.