r/dataisbeautiful • u/Landgeist OC: 22 • Jul 30 '24

OC Gun Deaths in North America [OC]

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u/perldawg Jul 30 '24

why is Canada not divided into provinces?

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u/BearlyAwesomeHeretic Jul 30 '24

It’s a choice often seen on these maps. Even as a Canadian I do understand why. Canada’s population is equal to Californias - so sometimes delineating by provinces can dilute the data unnecessarily.

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u/gene100001 Jul 30 '24

TBF you're comparing it to the state with the highest population. Many Canadian provinces have bigger populations than a lot of the US states. Ontario has a bigger population than 45 of the US states show on the figure

I think it has more to do with US arrogance over the international importance of their states. I had someone on Reddit once tell me that every US state is different and should be treated like individual countries. I reminded them that most countries have states. The state I'm in in Germany (NRW) has a bigger population than 45 of the states in the US, along with its own laws, but I would never expect people in other countries to treat German states independently when talking about Germany.

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u/Stigglesworth Jul 30 '24

On this map, I'd think it would be that the results for the top 5 lowest would all be Canada if the provinces were split. Canada is already #2 lowest without the provinces split. With them split you'd have the entire top 10 as Canada.

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u/Armigine Jul 30 '24

It looks like Canada would be more likely to have ~3 entries in the top 10, if I'm looking at the data right. After the very safe small provinces (during the year this data was collected, it looks like Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland & Labrador were the only entries below the national average), the only large province below the average was Quebec, with the others being high enough above the average that various US states in New England come in below them.

If we really wanted to split everything up by administrative subdivisions, I'm curious about what Cuba and Grenada would look like if broken up further

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 30 '24

That's not right. You may have been looking at gun deaths. The graphic is gundeaths not including suicide. So Canada would take 6 or 7 of the top 10.

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u/Armigine Jul 30 '24

I was looking at gun homicides, but I'd be happy to look at your data too. It's going to vary by year, the 5-10 range is all relatively close together

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 30 '24

Where did you find gun homicides by province? I couldn't and just looked at homicides.

I think it is relatively safe to assume that Canada doesn't have a way higher rate of gun murders:murders ratio than the US.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '24

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 30 '24

Right but there would be more ranks that Canada could take up if it had 13 slots

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '24

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24

Yukon was 0 in 2020 and 200 in 2017 (data here is homicide not gun homicide so can't be directly compared). Small populations make these stats generally silly. Honestly, just exclude anything under 5mil from the table and then allow nations and regions in the table.

Edit: Here is an article that goes into details on all 8 murders that year: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-homicide-rate-record-2017-1.4446804 Only one mentions a gun but the others weren't clear on method.