New Resources

Here's a recent email from The Trace announcing new resources:

A key part of The Trace’s mission is to improve public understanding of gun violence in the United States. One of the most important ways we do that is by wrangling reliable data on the crisis. In a field where research is just starting to get going again, good, accessible data is a rare resource.

Our reporters and editors have a wealth of experience finding and using gun violence data — founding staffer Jennifer Mascia began tracking shootings before The Trace even existed. Now, through the new Gun Violence Data Hubinitiative, we’re sharing that expertise with the world.

The Data Hub features three main tools:

• A help desk to field gun violence-related inquiries from journalists and researchers
• Resources for anyone to bolster their U.S. gun violence knowledge
• And, coming soon, an open Data Library of contextualized and well-documented datasets. 

There’s a lot to explore on the Hub’s new website, and there’s still more to come. (Stay tuned for data, graphics, reproducible methodologies, localized reporting recipes, and more in spring 2025.) For now, I’d recommend checking out the Gun Violence Glossary and Gun Violence 101 guide, as well as the Hub’s first collaboration: Staffer Ava Sasani worked with Verite News to examine New Orleans Police Department use-of-force data, and the resulting story is a blockbuster.

It is the Gun Violence Data Hub’s goal to become the most comprehensive publicly accessible data resource available on this subject, and I think it’s off to an excellent start. See for yourself: datahub.thetrace.org.

All the best,

Sunny Sone

Senior Editor, Audience and Engagement

The Trace