Shooting Statistics

A PHP based site for helping break down some basic school shooting statistics, especially in relation to transgender assailants. This was created as a means to help combat propaganda blaming transgender people for the majority of school shootings.

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+
• Web server (Apache/Nginx) or php -S localhost:8000 for local dev

Setup

1. Database

-- Run schema.sql in MySQL:
mysql -u root -p < schema.sql

2. Configuration

Upon first install, please load ./admin/login.php and follow the instructions to set up the database connection info and to set the admin password.

This writes includes/config.local.php, which holds the database credentials and the admin password hash and is never committed. includes/config.php carries defaults only — anything defined in config.local.php wins, so credentials belong there rather than in the tracked file. The includes/ directory ships with an .htaccess denying direct web access for that reason.

3. Web Server

Apache — ensure mod_rewrite is on (no .htaccess needed as-is).

NGINX — point root to the project directory.

Local dev:

cd school-shooting-stats
php -S localhost:8000

Directory Structure

school-shooting-stats/
├── index.php             # Homepage / overview dashboard
├── incidents.php         # Filterable incident list
├── incident.php          # Single incident detail
├── analysis.php          # Statistical analysis + trans context
├── heatmap.php           # Geographic incident map
├── geocode.php           # JSON endpoint that geocodes uncached locations
├── includes/
│   ├── config.php        # Defaults only — do not put credentials here
│   ├── config.local.php  # ← Credentials live here (generated, never committed)
│   ├── db.php            # Database helpers
│   ├── layout.php        # Shared header/footer
│   └── .htaccess         # Denies web access to this directory
├── admin/
│   ├── index.php         # Admin dashboard
│   ├── login.php         # Password login + first-run setup
│   ├── logout.php        # Session teardown
│   ├── edit.php          # Add / edit incidents
│   ├── list.php          # Manage all incidents
│   ├── import.php        # CSV import tool
│   ├── export.php        # CSV export
│   ├── delete.php        # Delete handler
│   └── auth.php          # Session auth + CSRF
├── assets/
│   └── css/main.css    # Full stylesheet
└── schema.sql          # Run once to create the database

Importing Your Spreadsheet

1. Open your spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets
2. File → Save As / Download → CSV (comma-separated)
3. Go to yoursite.com/admin/import.php
4. Upload the CSV

The importer auto-detects column names. Before matching, each header is lowercased, #, ? and ! are stripped, the filler word "of" is removed, and runs of spaces, hyphens and underscores collapse to a single underscore — so Total # of assailants arrives as total_assailants and matches. Accepted names per field:

Field	Accepted names
Date	date, incident_date, event_date
City	city
State	state
School	school, school_name, name
Deaths	deaths, death, killed, fatalities, fatality
Injuries	injuries, injured, injury, wounded, wounds
Description	description, desc, notes, summary, details
Trans assailant?	trans, had_trans, trans_assailant, had_trans_assailant, transgender, transgender_involvement, trans_shooter
# trans assailants	trans_assailants, trans_count, num_trans, trans_assailant_count, transgender_count
Genders	gender, genders, assailant_gender, assailant_genders, shooter_gender
Total assailants	total_assailants, assailants, num_assailants, total_shooters, shooters
Source	source, source_url, url, urls, link, reference

An unrecognised column is ignored rather than treated as an error, so a spreadsheet carrying extra columns imports fine.

Admin Panel

From the admin panel you can:

• Add individual incidents manually
• Edit or delete any record
• Import CSV files (bulk)
• Export all incidents back out as CSV
• View an import log
• Geocode incident locations for the map (results are cached, so each city/state pair is looked up once)

Statistical Methodology

The Analysis page computes:

• Trans assailants as % of all assailants — direct calculation from data
• Expected trans assailants — total_assailants × 0.008 (Williams Institute 2025 estimate: ~0.8% of U.S. adults identify as transgender)
• Ratio to expected — actual ÷ expected (1.0 = exactly proportional)

Population figure source: Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law (2025)

Three constants in includes/config.php govern this, and they are meant to be changed together:

Constant	Purpose
TRANS_POPULATION_PCT	The population share itself, as a decimal — the multiplier behind the expected-value calculation
TRANS_POPULATION_SOURCE	The citation text printed beside the figures on the Analysis page, the Overview page and in the footer
TRANS_POPULATION_URL	Where that citation links to

Revising the estimate — or repointing the link if the Williams Institute reorganises their site — is three lines in one file. Any of the three can also be overridden in includes/config.local.php without touching the tracked defaults.