A week’s worth of gun reports, courtesy of Wordle.
We get some interesting reader email here at the Gun Report – some of it nice, some of it not so nice. But Jonathan Greene, a data miner at a company called Acme Informatics, recently wrote to tell us that he took a selection of Gun Report entries and created a word cloud. This is a text graphic in which words that appear more frequently are given greater prominence. Mr. Greene designed his cloud by hand, extracting different parts of speech and determining frequencies for each adjective. In his version, “dead” and “early” appear most prominently.
We liked the concept so much that we ran the last week’s worth of gun reports through Wordle, a Web site which generates big, colorful word clouds. As you can see in the above image, “shot” appears most prominently, which is to be expected, and “shooting” is the next most prominent word. After that is “man,” which reflects the vast majority of both the victims and perpetrators of gun violence. “Night” and “Saturday” are next, which makes sense, as Saturday is a very busy day for shootings, as are the evenings.
And lastly, the word “early” looms large in both word clouds, probably because the vast majority of shootings seem to occur in the dead of night, between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Here is today’s report.
—Jennifer Mascia
A 4-year-old child is recovering in the hospital after being shot in Brighton, Ala., Sunday afternoon. Someone shot into an occupied vehicle in which the child was a passenger at around 3 p.m. Police are soliciting tips from the public.
—WVTM-TV
An accidental shooting claimed the life of a 12-year-old in Dayton, Ohio, Sunday morning. Deputies responded to a home on Riverpark Parkway just before 11:30 a.m. and determined that the shooting was an accident.
—2News
A shooting in East Palo Alto, Calif., left a 15-year old boy dead and two others injured Sunday night. Four teens were sitting in a car when someone approached and fired several rounds into the vehicle. 15-year-old Jose Quinonez suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. The other two victims, ages 15 and 16, were transported to a hospital. Police are soliciting tips.
—CBS SF Bay Area
Charles McIver Jr., 14, was shot and wounded while sleeping in his Sanford, N.C., home Sunday night. Family members said they believe his older brother was the intended target of the gunman. Deputies said they have no leads in the shooting. Almost 30 shell casings were found in the road.
—WRAL.com
A woman was wounded after a gunman allegedly opened fire on three people in a Pomona, Calif., parking lot late Sunday. Eileen Montoya, 34, was found suffering from several gunshot wounds. The shooter also fired at two other people but missed. Police are soliciting tips.
—Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
A man is in custody after police say he shot and wounded his son in Denver, Colo., Monday morning. Police say the man shot his son in the arm during an argument. The father was taken into custody. The victim will survive.
—DenverPost.com
A man was shot in the leg by someone in a passing car as he walked down a Jacksonville, Fla., street Monday afternoon. After the shooting, the victim hobbled down Plymouth Street to the Sunrise Food Store, where the manager told him not to get blood in the store and to wait outside for an ambulance. It was the second shooting in the neighborhood in three days.
—Jacksonville.com
A man was injured Monday afternoon in a shooting in the Longwood Manor neighborhood of Chicago, Ill. Shortly before 1:30 p.m., a man believed to be in his 60s suffered a gunshot wound to his shoulder. The victim was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police are investigating.
—Chicago Tribune
Gigi M. Riley, 32, was shot twice at her South Bend, Ind., home early Monday after she awoke to a loud bang and encountered a shadowy figure at the front door. The intruder shot her twice and fled. Police do not believe the shooting was random. The victim recently admitted that she led a scheme that used bogus tax returns to defraud the government for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
—South Bend Tribune
Bobby Blair, 26, was shot in the leg in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Monday afternoon. The shooting took place in the back of a house near the garage. A gun was found nearby. Police are searching for the suspects.
—KCRG.com
A 19-year-old man was shot while walking down a street in Whiting, Ind., Monday night. A vehicle pulled up to the victim and a man stepped out and the two exchanged words. The victim was then shot in the back with a handgun. The suspected shooter fled.
—NWITimes.com
A man was shot in a home in Ramsey, Ind., Monday morning. When officers arrived they found a woman on the porch and a man inside who was dead from gunshot wounds. The investigation is ongoing.
—WISHTV.com
D’Andre Goodley, 18, was shot and killed after he and two others were attacked Sunday night in the small Acadia Parish community of Branch in Louisiana. The other two victims were transported to the hospital with gunshot wounds. Police said the shootings followed an altercation involving the victims.
—The Advocate
A 20-year-old man was found with wounds from a shotgun inside an apartment on the west side of Spartanburg, N.C., late Monday afternoon. He died at the scene. Police believe the shooter is a woman about the same age as the victim. She is being questioned.
—GoUpstate.com
Authorities are investigating a late-night shooting in Laurens County, S.C., that left a man injured Sunday. After the shooting, the victim showed up on a homeowner’s front porch with gunshot wounds in his leg and groin area. He was flown to Greenville Memorial Hospital.
—WYFF4.com
Gunfire erupted early Sunday outside a Garland, N.C., club, resulting in injuries to three men in their 20s. Police said they are not being identified for fear of retaliation. The shooting occurred at the Boom Boom Room, which was host to about 200 people. “The victims have stated that they did not see anyone shooting,” Capt. Rodney Hester said. “They just heard the gunshots before being struck.”
—fayobserver.com
According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 4,283 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.
