Firearm related death is a complex problem, and of increasing social importance. Even though the overall firearm death rate has not increased substantially in recent years, the rates for different groups has changed dramatically. In this project, you will examine the standard deviation of the firearm death rate. In particular, you will explore differences in the firearm death rate between males and females.

The following overview on firearm deaths for youth and minorities reveals the importance of the situation, highlighting the fact that more teenagers in the US die from firearm injuries than all natural causes combined.

In this statement from physicians, which reports on the scope of problem, you will find that firearms are the second leading cause of injury-related death in the United States.

The problem in understanding the data is that the statistics are different for different groups of people. Overall, males are much more likely to be killed by firearms than are females. Yet for certain groups of women, the death rate is higher than that for males. An example would be African-American girls (aged 10 to 14) compared to Caucasion boys (in the same age group): these girls have a 25% higher firearm death rate.

Clearly, there is a difference in the firearm death rate and possibly in the rate of variability between the two groups. It is this difference that is interesting: if we are to alleviate the problem, we must understand the problem. Part of this understanding requires us to identify the groups that are most susceptible.