PHOENIX — According to the non-profit group Gun Violence Archive there have been 151 reported incidents of gun violence in Arizona this year during weekends. On average, there are seven reports of a gun incident each weekend. On a four-week moving average, the average number of incidents collected by Gun Violence Archive each weekend has doubled since October 2021.
If the current trend plays out, the rate of weekend gun incidents in 2022 will end up between 350 and 400. The highest annual number according to the Gun Violence Archive dataset was 394 in 2020. The data shows a steep 50% increase in weekend gun incidences between 2019 and 2020.
Since 2020 the state has had 28 weekends with 10 or more reports of a gun incident. There were 16 such incidents reported on the weekend of January 29, 2020 alone. Four of the top five weekends occurred in 2020. So far none in 2022.
Across Arizona, gun incidents this year have mostly happened in the state’s three urban areas of the Phoenix metro, Tucson, and Flagstaff. In the Valley of sun, gun incidents are more concentrated in the regions northwest of downtown following Grand Avenue until the border of Peoria. There are also clustered around the I-17 and Sky Harbor.
Gun Violence Archive combines a team of 20 researchers with software that looks at thousands of local news outlets and government websites to come up with an almost real-time list of gun incidents. Their website states that the group does not advocate for any particular positions for or against gun control and makes the data available to anyone for research purposes.
