Who commits public mass shootings, and what motivates them to kill? With the help of a landmark database, VOA examines the social, psychological, emotional and environmental factors that contributed to these rare crimes.

In November, I was asked to look into a recently published database on mass shooters in the United States. While there are many datasets on shootings, the Violence Project’s database is unique because of its scale and analysis of the individual perpetrators.

I partnered with two VOA reporters to create an outline for the project.

The main story provides an overview of mass shooters and an explanation of how the data could help policymakers reduce future casualties.

Because the researchers found common patterns tied to the location of the shootings, we set up dedicated pages for schools, workplaces, houses of worship and restaurants and bars. These pages were also designed to be used in the event of future mass shootings, and allow us to quickly provide some historical context.

One of our biggest challenges was presenting a database about mass shooters without contributing to the notoriety many of them sought.

In the stories, we mention only two of the 171 shooters by name. We blurred, graphically obstructed, or cropped the few photos we used. Instead, the primary visual is a grid of simplified silhouettes representing the shooters.

Because the data focuses on the shooters and their backgrounds, we felt that it was important to find a way to balance including images that were specific to them, without contributing to a subculture that revels in their violent acts.

I then used that grid to reveal common threads among the shooters based on the data. As readers scroll down the story, the shooters’ silhouettes that match different attributes are dynamically highlighted.

Timeline graphic showing the number of mass shootings since 1966.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Drew the 171 simplified silhouette portraits, and connected them to the data using D3.
  • Used JavaScript to highlight the different groups of shooters as the readers scroll through the story.
  • Created a series of static and interactive graphics and maps using D3, Leaflet and ai2html.
  • Researched the names of the more than 1,200 people killed in mass shootings since 1966, in order to recognize the names of the people lost in the shootings.
  • Converted my tool for helping reporters to explore the demographic and event data into a public-facing page for readers, allowing them to filter by attributes (e.g. “white male school shooters who had acquired their guns illegally” or “workplace shooters who were dealing with substance abuse and psychosis”).
  • After publication, the researchers at the Violence Project embedded this tool on their website.