Collecting Data on Mass Shootings in the U.S.

With many people still trying to come to terms with the news from Orlando, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas, the conversations around gun control, racial profiling, and police tactics, are front and center. But one element missing from these conversations is concrete data, largely because the federal government does not collect it. For this week’s Please Explain, we are going to discuss the data behind the high profile shootings in the news: how it’s being collected, and what it reveals. Jamiles Lartey, reporter for Guardian US will talk about their project, The Counted, which is tracking the number of people killed by law enforcement in 2015 and 2016. Ben Casselman, Senior Editor and Chief Economics Writer at 538, will discuss his site’s series “Gun Deaths in America” which goes far broader and analyzes all gun deaths in the U.S.