138 – Statistical Applications in Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement
Spatio-Temporal Trends in Mass Shooting Incidents in the United States
Ali Arab
Georgetown University
Mass shootings have been increasing in frequency and intensity (fatalities/injuries) in the United States over the recent years. A subset of gun violence issues, the mass shootings phenomenon has been drawing attention recently due to substantial surge in number of incidents, number of victims, as well as substantial decrease in time between mass shooting incidents (resulting in almost constant presence of mass shooting news in media). Using data from several popular databases that track mass shooting incidents in the United States over the past few years, we conduct a spatio-temporal analysis of these incidents and study the spatial and temporal trends in mass shootings. We also analyze trends in mass shooting incidents data for the past several decades (mid-60s to present). In our analyses, we consider statistical relationship between mass shooting data and factors such as gun policy, socio-economic factors, among others. Finally, we discuss potential issues with data collection and categorization of mass shootings reports and possible remedies. We use a hierarchical Bayesian modeling framework and discuss future extensions of our modeling strategies.