Explore trends in any state. This dashboard allows you to switch between counts and rates, choose whether to view raw monthly data or a 12-month rolling average, and explore trends for youth (age 12-17), children (age 0-11), or all children under age 18. This dashboard also allows you to include or exclude incidents that involved only a person under age 18 possessing a firearm. All figures come from Gun Violence Archive. Rates are an annual rate per 100,000 residents in the relevant age group, using CDC SEER single-age population estimates. Rolling averages, where selected, are calculated as a trailing 12-month mean.
Cmd/Ctrl-click to select multiple. “United States” is listed first in both dropdowns if you want the national trend.
The Gun Violence Archive is a leading source for data about incidents involving firearms in the U.S. Professional staff at GVA sweep law enforcement and media sources on a daily basis and record the incident along with up to 120 different variables in their database. As more information about an incident becomes available, GVA staff update incident reports and add additional sources. Incidents in the GVA data are highly verifiable: 100% of incidents in the child extract have a source listed, and 56% have multiple sources listed.
Independent assessments of GVA data have found them to closely track other sources of information about firearm incidents. An evaluation of GVA data in four cities published in JAMA Network Open found GVA data captured more than 80% of shooting incidents across six years and that the archive improved over time. By 2020, the GVA database contained 92% of incidents recorded in data collected by police. Despite the already-small rate of uncaptured incidents, GVA is significantly more likely to capture an incident that involves participants under age 18.
The GVA is intended to capture all types of incidents involving firearms, not merely incidents that involve criminal behavior. It includes, for instance, incidents involving accidental shootings, gun possession, and suicide.
Analyses of GVA data yield similar but not identical results to analyses of other sources of data. Trends and jurisdictional profiles broadly align with data from the CDC’s Vital Statistics Survey and the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). One key cause of divergences between GVA data and governmental sources is that governmental sources such as NIBRS use sampling techniques and extrapolation to account for missing data whereas the GVA contains only verified incidents.
Bottom line: No source captures every firearm incident in the United States, and GVA, police, and hospital data all diverge to some degree wherever they have been compared. For narrow analyses — a specific city or short time period — local police or hospital records may offer more precision. But for tracking national patterns over time, GVA is the most comprehensive, transparent, and consistently sourced public option, and one that has grown more reliable each year.
Want the headline findings first? Read the key takeaways. Curious about the data itself? See about the Gun Violence Archive.