It seems like we never hear the end of gun death tragedies in the United States. We are exposed so much that, I believe, many of us have become immune, desensitized to the horror that takes place in our streets, schools, and workplaces daily.
Here is an article from Vox that enables data visualization to convey the impact of gun deaths in the States, whether that be mass shootings, homicides, suicides, or accidents. This was published early this morning, February 27th, and I found it to be an extreme jolt of reality. The authors took data from 2013 until February 26th, 2020 and not only broke down the causes and locations of gun deaths but also compared the data and gun laws to that of other countries.
There isn't much text, as the information is mostly gained through data visualization which, I believe in this case, is more powerful than words. It is hard to grasp the effect of guns in America but this layout does a good job.
The authors also focused the data from 2013-present for an important reason: the Sandy Hook massacre, in which a gunman killed 26 people mostly school-aged children under 7, occurred on December 14th, 2012. In the days and weeks after this tragedy there was a shift from "thoughts and prayers" to "never again" but, as data shows, this senseless act did not trigger the response people were hoping for. Since Sandy Hook, there have been at least 2,387 mass shootings in the United States with at least 2,706 killed and 9,946 injured. The portrayal of data did a good job at pointing out how dire this situation is and that no matter how numb we are, we must make a change.