Introducing GunFacts: A Tool for Fact-Driven Gun Debates

Farhan Mustafa -

GunFacts (a project by grafiti, a Matter Seven company) is a site where you can find and share charts, graphs and other data visualizations that reflect how guns impact America — including mass shootings, gun access, violence against women, families and minorities, Congressional voting, public opinion, the NRA, and more. We’ve compiled shareable facts from over 40 publishers and 60 data sources (and growing!). We urge you to explore & learn, share, and communicate with data-backed insights — across social media, in your community orgs and in your personal conversations. Whether you’re a concerned parent or student, journalist, community organizer, advocate, activist, victim of gun violence, or know someone who is — this resource is for you.

Washington Post Visualization after Parkland Shooting, February 2018

GunFacts is a response to something we all deeply need in the debate over sensible gun policies: data-driven facts. Like millions of others, we’ve been affected personally by gun violence. And like those millions, we’ve been inspired by the students from Parkland and all over America that are driving our nation to find a solution that works, once and for all. We believe there’s a solution out there that protects people from harm while also respecting Second Amendment rights, but in order to do that, we need to better understand the data behind guns.

Here are some awesome things you can do with GunFacts:

  • Browse over 900 data-backed visualizations of insights across the following topics (so far): Corporate America, Gun Access, Gun Money for Congress, Gun Ownership, Gun Violence, How Congress Votes, Laws and Policies, Mass Shootings, Media Coverage, Mental Health and Suicide, Minorities and Prejudice, the N.R.A., Police and Crime, Public Opinion and Polling, School Shootings, Women and Families, World Comparisons, and Youth.
  • Quickly find and share images to Twitter, Facebook, or wherever you talk about these issues. (Please attribute the publishers using source links or @ on social.)
  • Read the source article or data behind each chart.
Total NRA Donations by State, Washington Post, 2018
  • Review every single House and Senate representative that’s taken money from the N.R.A., and see how reps are voting for gun legislation.
  • See state-level data for all topics, including gun laws and indicators like gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.
  • Find data on mental health illness and how it relates to guns — and how it doesn’t.
  • Discover major public opinion polls from Pew Research Center, Gallup, MorningConsult, Ipsos, and YouGov.

We sourced our content from a wide range of reputable publishers, journalists, activists, advocate orgs, data providers, academics, and data scientists (we’ve provided source links to all content 🙏) — including the Washington Post, the The New York Times, the Associated Press, Pew Research Center, NPR, Vox, CNN, Quartz, The Trace, Everytown, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Moms Demand Action, the Giffords Law Center, the CDC, the FBI, the ATF, Mapping Police Violence, the Gun Violence Archive, and 60+ more.

Number of Gun Deaths in 2018 (so far), Gun Violence Archive

This is a public effort and we need YOUR help to make this the best repository for finding research, data, and insights around gun violence in America. PLEASE send us any charts, articles, sources, studies, visuals, introductions, requests, and feedback on how to make it better. We’re going to update this as new info comes in, so keep us busy. We’re updating the site every day with more data and features, so please chime in!

Holler & Join Us: hi@grafiti.io, Facebook, Twitter, Insta or in the comments below 👇

#neveragain #marchforourlives #facts4change