The Florida gun-death chart that ran upside down

Reuters plotted Florida’s firearm murders with the y-axis flipped, so a sharp rise in gun deaths after the 2005 “Stand Your Ground” law read, at a glance, as a plunge toward zero.

Reuters, chart by Christine Chan (via Live Science), 2014Added July 5, 2026

Line chart titled “Gun deaths in Florida” with the y-axis inverted — 0 at the top, 1000 at the bottom — and a red area hanging from the top edge, so the post-2005 rise in firearm murders dives downward and looks like a decline — Exhibit A — as published

The same firearm-murder series on a normal zero-based axis, revealing a long decline that bottoms out near 1999 and then spikes from 521 in 2005 to 825 in 2007 — Exhibit B — the honest redraw

The claim

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law worked — gun deaths dropped off a cliff the moment it passed in 2005.

The trick

The y-axis is upside down: zero sits at the top and the counts grow as you travel downward, so a rise is drawn as a fall. Firearm murders went 521 → 740 → 825 in the two years after the law — a 58% jump — but because bigger numbers hang lower, the line dives toward the floor and reads as relief. The red area pouring down from the top finishes the illusion, framing the worst stretch on the chart as the calmest.

The honest version

Turn the axis the right way up — up means more, zero at the bottom — and the identical numbers tell the opposite story: a decade-long decline that bottoms out around 1999, drifts, then spikes hard right after 2005. “Up means more” is a convention doing quiet load-bearing work; remove it and the chart says the reverse of its own data. The Reuters copy alongside the graphic reported the increase plainly — only the picture disagreed.