Unraveling Factors Influencing Shooting Incidents: Preliminary Analysis and Insights

TL;DR

This study analyzes K12 shooting incident data over several decades to identify key factors influencing casualties, revealing differences between media portrayals and actual shooters, and employing statistical models to inform prevention strategies.

Contribution

It provides a preliminary statistical analysis of factors influencing school shooting casualties, highlighting the importance of targeted attacks and shooter demographics.

Findings

Targeted attacks significantly impact casualties.

Differences exist between media portrayals and actual shooters.

Statistical models identify key factors affecting incident severity.

Abstract

The following is a write up of the progress of modeling data from the K12 organization \cite{Riedman_2023}. Data was characterized and investigated for statistically significant factors. The incident data was spilt into three sets: the entire set of incidents, incidents from 1966 - 2017, and incidents from 2018 - 2023. This was done in an attempt to discern key factors for the acceleration of incidents over the last several years. The data set was cleaned and processed primarily through RStudio. The individual factors were studied and subjected to statistical analysis where appropriate. As it turns out, there are differences between media portrayals of shooters and actual shooters. Then, multiple regression techniques were performed then followed by ANOVA of the models to determine statistically significant independent variables and their influence on casualties. Thus far, linear regression and negative binomial regression have been attempted. Further refining of the methods will be necessary for Poisson regression and logistic regression to be viably attempted. At this point in time a common theme among each of the models is the presence of targeted attacks affecting casualties. Further study can lead to improved safe guarding strategies to eliminate or minimize casualties. Further, increased understanding of shooter demographics can also lead to outreach and prevention programs.