Analysis:
As mentioned in the introduction paragraph, we both thought this project was an interesting topic to tackle because we want to know whether the reason why the United States has such a high number of gun violence, ranked one in the world, due to not having gun control law or not. As a result, we began to do more research by tackling this issue to better understand the social issues for our final project. The main goal of our project was to determine whether gun control laws affect to reduce the gun violence. To do this analysis, we focused primarily on the state of Maine as a representative since low numbers of murders and the high percentage of murders involving firearms dominated in 2018 according to the data collected from the FBI.
Although according to American Progress, Alabama would have been the best state to analyze since it had the highest percentage (of 100% murders involving firearms), has had some of the worst gun crimes in the country, gun crimes in Alabama were twice the national average at 33% in 2009, and the state of Alabama had lost the largest number of children (people under the age of 18) due to gun-related crimes in 2010, we had to stick with Maine because we could not find a Canadian province that is similar to Alabama. Our objective was to inform the authorities of gun-related incidents in the United States. To do this, we have found that Maine is similar to Quebec and We will be comparing Maine to Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia and Ohio to Ontario (Nagowski).
Using the research we have conducted, we will proceed to analyze gun murders specifically in the state of Maine and Quebec. The assumptions above will allow us to notice any similar trends between these two geographical areas and this will allow us to compare any gun-related murders and to extrapolate any trends and patterns. Looking at Figure 5 under Thematic Map Layers, Maine vs Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia (2018), even though Quebec is coloured in darker red and looking at Figure 6, the proportional circle sizes of Maine and Quebec are similar to one another, users might assume that Quebec has a higher number of murders compared to Maine and that they might have a similar percentage of murders involving firearms. However, they are relatively different. Figure 1 shows the number of murders in the United States ranges from 10 – 1,739 whereas the number of murders in Canada ranges from 0 – 266 is shown on Figure 3, and according to Figure 2, the percentage of murders involving firearms in the United States ranges from 13 – 100% whereas the range in Canada is 0 – 45% according to Figure 4.
Results:
We have successfully created totals of 8 maps: 2 of the United States, 2 of Canada, and 4 of comparison between the states and provinces. As we discussed earlier, the similarity search has found that Maine and Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick are similar in their economies and they are tied since the Canadian economy heavily relies on the American economy. However, the results indicate that Quebec has had a higher number of gun violence-related deaths than New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Therefore, we mainly focused on comparing the state of Maine to Quebec. It’s important to note that Canada has a lower number of murders and the percentage of murders involving firearms compared to the United States. Even though the government said that there is no effect on gun control laws (Criminal Justice), at least we think that it could reduce the number of murders in the United States by comparing/correlating with Canada, where gun control law is applied. We conclude that the large urban population in Quebec has a significant impact on the well-being of residents. Moreover, residents in Quebec can easily obtain and purchase firearms since their economies are larger and are more reliant on the United States. While Quebec may be similar to the state of Maine, Quebec’s close relationship with the United States has had a significant influence on homicides and gun-related deaths in Quebec.