GUNSWhat We Learned from Analyzing 10 Years of Shooting Data

By Samantha Storey and Brian Freskos

Published 14 January 2025

A Trace series challenges what many people might think about gun violence in America. Here is one of the highlights: You’re more likely to be shot in the rural South than in big cities like Chicago.

The Gun Violence Archive is a nonprofit digital database that houses detailed information on gun injuries and deaths. It began tracking shootings through media and police reports in 2014. By the end of 2023, a decade of data had been amassed, and at The Trace, we thought it timely to look for patterns and stories about the beat we cover. 

As it happens, The Trace has been around for almost as long as GVA. For nearly a decade, we’ve been covering a crisis that takes tens of thousands of lives every year in the United States. In other words, it takes a lot to surprise us. Yet, as we reported our series “A Decade of American Gun Violence,” we found the hidden toll of shootings in rural areas, near schools, and on the road. Here are some of the biggest takeaways.

You’re More Likely to Be Shot in the Rural South Than in Big Cities Like Chicago
Gun violence is often associated with urban areas, but in our review, we found that half of all shootings occurred outside large cities, in communities of fewer than 1 million people. Thirteen of the 20 towns and cities with the highest rates of shootings were located in the South. 

Clarksdale, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Laurinburg, North Carolina — each with a metro population of less than 100,000 people — were among the places that saw more people shot per capita in 2023 than Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

“People generally think of gun violence as an urban issue, but we’re learning that is not always the case,” said Shani Buggs, a community violence researcher at the University of California, Davis. “There are rural areas with higher rates of gun violence than some urban areas.”

Large Democratic-Run Cities Are Getting Safer, Despite What Republican Politicians Say
At an August campaign event in Michigan, President-elect Donald Trump said that cities led by Democrats were awash in violence. “It’s just insane,” he said. “But you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be.”