Want to fix gun violence in America? Go local.

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The map of America’s gun violence epidemic can seem overwhelming. There were more than 13,000 gun homicides in the US in 2015, across nearly 3,500 cities and towns. But the toll of this gun violence was not distributed equally. Half of America's gun homicides in 2015 were clustered in just 127 cities and towns, according to a new geographic analysis by the Guardian, even though they contain less than a quarter of the nation’s population.

In 2015, there were more than 13,000 gun homicides throughout the US … New York Chicago Oakland Baltimore St Louis New Orleans … but half of those deaths were in just 127 cities, which contain almost a quarter of the population New York Chicago Oakland Baltimore St Louis New Orleans

Even within those cities, violence is further concentrated in the tiny neighborhood areas that saw two or more gun homicide incidents in a single year. Four and a half million Americans live in areas of these cities with the highest numbers of gun homicide, which are marked by intense poverty, low levels of education, and racial segregation. Geographically, these neighborhood areas are small: a total of about 1,200 neighborhood census tracts, which, laid side by side, would fit into an area just 42 miles wide by 42 miles long. The problem they face is devastating. Though these neighborhood areas contain just 1.5% of the country’s population, they saw 26% of America’s total gun homicides. Gun control advocates say it is unacceptable that Americans overall are "25 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries". People who live in these neighborhood areas face an average gun homicide rate about 400 times higher than the rate across those high-income countries. Understanding this dramatic clustering of America’s of gun violence is crucial for the effort to save more lives. “We can’t do much about crime prevention of homicide if we try to attack it as a broad, global problem, throwing money at it in a sort of broad, global way,” said David Weisburd, a leading researcher on the geographic distribution of crime at George Mason University. America’s gun policy debate is usually driven by high-profile mass shootings that seem to strike at random, and it focuses on sweeping federal gun control or mental health policies. But much of America’s gun homicide problem happens in a relatively small number of predictable places, often driven by predictable groups of high-risk people, and its burden is anything but random. The concentration of gun homicides in certain census tracts mirrors what criminologists have discovered when they look at crime patterns within individual cities: roughly 1.5% of street segments in cities see about 25% of crime incidents, a trend dubbed “the law of crime concentration”. The Guardian’s new geographic analysis is the first time that gun homicides nationwide have been mapped down to the census tract level, researchers said. This new approach was made possible with the geocoded data collected since 2014 by the not-for-profit Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings and gun deaths using media reports. The FBI’s national crime data only provides gun murder statistics down to the city level, which masks the clustering of violence within neighborhoods.

Case study: St Louis Let's take a look at St Louis, which has the highest gun murder rate of any large city in the country. continue scrolling

If every 2015 gun homicide in St Louis were distributed randomly, it would look something like this. But if you live in St Louis, you know that’s wrong. This is what the pattern of gun homicides in the city actually looks like. Homicides are concentrated in areas of high poverty. And the lowest educational attainment. And the neighborhoods forged out of decades of racial segregation.

The clear dividing line you see between areas with many gun homicides and few gun homicides is Delmar Boulevard, which has developed over time into a rigid racial boundary that carves the city in two. For the greater part of the 20th century, racial housing covenants, discriminatory lending practices and “white flight” imposed de facto segregation as pronounced as any ever achieved by Jim Crow on St Louis’ black residents. Even today, some residents treat Delmar Boulevard as a line they do not want to cross. In May, a group of parents canceled a kindergarten Little League game held in a park north of Delmar Boulevard, telling the opposing team that they were “uncomfortable with the location” of their home field, a decision a home team parent called “racist”.

Like income inequality, murder inequality in America is stark

Gun violence is a regressive tax that falls heaviest on neighborhoods already struggling with poverty, unemployment, and failing schools. The unequal burden of violence is also marked by intense racial disparities. “It’s not about race, per se, it’s about how other conditions are racialized, are racially inequitable,” said Lauren Krivo, a Rutgers University sociologist who studies the geography of race and crime. Most people don’t understand “how few predominantly white communities have conditions that are anywhere near the levels of disadvantage that are common in non-white communities, and particularly black communities,” she said.

New York, New York 2015 gun homicide incident Percent below 100% poverty line 80 40 0 Percent without high school degree 80 40 0 Percent black 100 50 0 In New York, a city of eight million people, only 1.5% of census tracts saw two or more gun homicide incidents in 2015. That’s a much lower percentage than St Louis, where a shocking 44% of census tracts saw multiple gun homicides in 2015. Compared with St Louis, New York also has much broader swathes of the city that saw no gun homicides at all. New York City’s murder rate of about four murders per 100,000 people is neatly in line with the national average. Baltimore, Maryland 2015 gun homicide incident Percent below 100% poverty line 80 40 0 Percent without high school degree 80 40 0 Percent black 100 50 0 Gun homicides spiked in Baltimore in 2015, leaving the city with its highest-ever recorded murder rate. But the increased homicides remained concentrated, with largely white neighborhoods almost completely exempt from the rising violence. 92% of Baltimore’s gun murder victims in 2015 were black men, according to local police department statistics. Chicago, Illinois 2015 gun homicide incident Percent below 100% poverty line 80 40 0 Percent without high school degree 80 40 0 Percent black 100 50 0 In 2015, Chicago had the highest total number of gun homicides of any city in America. But the city's gun homicide rate per person was much lower than St Louis. Just 13% of census tracts in Chicago saw multiple gun murders in 2015, and these tracts were responsible for 65% of the city’s gun homicides. Oakland, California 2015 gun homicide incident Percent below 100% poverty line 80 40 0 Percent without high school degree 80 40 0 Percent black 100 50 0 The most concentrated gun homicide areas in Oakland cluster far from the city center, in the long stretch of East Oakland known as the flatlands. Though Chicago’s population is nearly seven times larger than Oakland’s, the two cities showed similar levels of gun homicide concentration. In both cities, nearly 70% of all census tracts saw no gun homicides, and the 13% of census tracts that saw multiple gun homicides were responsible for the majority of the city’s fatal gun violence. New Orleans, Louisiana 2015 gun homicide incident Percent below 100% poverty line 80 40 0 Percent without high school degree 80 40 0 Percent black 100 50 0 22% of New Orleans census tracts saw multiple gun homicides, and these areas were responsible for more than 75% of the murders. The concentration of violence in New Orleans is closest to the concentration in Baltimore.

Dramatic racial disparities in homicide have persisted for decades

Within most high-gun homicide cities, victims of gun murder are overwhelmingly black men. This dramatic disparity has persisted for decades, even as cities have seen sharp increases and decreases in murder rates, according to FBI gun murder data. These charts break down the numbers of gun murders since 1975 by race and gender for different cities.

Black men White men Black women White women Missing or unconfirmed data

St Louis, Missouri 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015 New York, New York 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015 Baltimore, Maryland 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015 Chicago, Illinois 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015 Oakland, California 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015 New Orleans, Louisiana 200 400 600 800 1975 1995 2015

Since 1993, the peak of the gun violence epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the nation’s overall gun homicide rate has fallen nearly 50%, according to national estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Overall, the country is much safer than in the 1990s, though polls show most Americans remain unaware of that trend. For African Americans, too, the overall gun homicide rate fell by about half between 1993 and 2010, according to national CDC estimates. Examining gun murder trends across individual cities, and going back to 1975, shows a more complex picture. New York City has become radically safer for all residents since the early 1990s, and continues to see decreases in violence. In other cities, including St Louis and Baltimore, the number of black men murdered with guns in recent years is close to the early 1990s.

Not just neighborhoods but people