About 20 people account for most of the criminal gunfire in Niagara Falls.

That's the conclusion of two Niagara University researchers who analyzed and mapped police incident reports.

Criminal justice professors Timothy Lauger and Craig Rivera noted 650 people were identified in Falls police reports over five years, from 2010 to 2015, as having some association with a gunman.

"As you gaze at the map, the red lines, the shootings, are very much concentrated within a small number of those people," Lauger said. "Within the most known 650 people, maybe 20 people are involved."

The Niagara University professors also interviewed those involved in crimes.

"The perpetrators are generally the victims. There's a big overlap," Lauger said. "When I'm asking people 'Have you ever been shot?' and they've been shot 10 times, these are also people who are heavily involved in shootings themselves, or the people they hang out with have been involved in shootings. It tends to go back and forth between the same small network."