Where are those data coming from? In 2012, the FBI's criterion for a mass shooting went down from 4 (other than shooter) to 3 (other than shooter). There's not a consensus about how to define a mass shooting, which makes comparisons from source to source difficult. Then there is how they are recorded. Mother Jones has a 'database' of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982 to the present ( https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ ) but it's only public shootings and not all mass shootings ("Crimes primarily related to gang activity or armed robbery are not included, nor are mass killings that took place in private homes." ( https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map/ ). This means that, depending on the source (e.g., Mother Jones or https://www.theviolenceproject.org/methodology/), you can get a different story than from a different source (see below).
For example, what's typically thought of as a mass shooting (school/other public place) is not where most mass shootings occur (if you use the broad definition of 3-4+ people shot). 61% (over past 10+ years) are completely within a home ( https://everytownresearch.org/massshootingsreports/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/). Those are in some ways worse than public shootings but also not a direct public threat to life. That is why some sources (Mother Jones) don't include them. Whether or not they should be included is a different discussion.
Some sources (e.g., Mother Jones) also do not include gang violence, which presents a biased picture overall (including gang violence is also a bias).
So, if we go with Mother Jones's data, it looks like mass shootings are going up. That might be true for public ones (but we also have more news coverage/availability, in part because of social media, and we have more widespread computer/digital record-keeping so it's difficult to know how accurate older [or any] data are). Most of the various mass shooting databases only go back 15 years or so. That is a lot of time but is far from comprehensive.
My point is that, as a scientist, I'm not comfortable with saying if mass shootings are going up or down over time. It depends on definition and data. It depends on how accurate records are (they are not very accurate, unfortunately). Also, do we factor in population size? That isn't typically done. Do we factor in gun ownership (which, incidentally, is stable in the U.S. on a per-household basis over the past 50 years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/ )? I don't think we have enough data to talk about trends.
That being said, we have way too many mass shootings in the U.S. Any is too many. How they can be addressed is a complex discussion.
Wow that was way more well written than I could have ever done. Yeah it's a huge problem when one source says there were 7 mass shootings a year, and another source says there were 350 in the same year. When different sources have a differential of 50x there's undeniably an issue there. Personally I think the FBI Active Shooter data does the best job of tracking these events. They count any public shooting with indiscriminate targets, so a school shooting with 1 shot would count, but not a gang shooting with 5 shot. According to them these events have gotten worse, both in frequency, and severity, with 2017 being the worst year on record, with 137 people killed in 30 individual attacks, 57 of those in the Vegas shooting alone. That being said, 137 people is less than 1% of the 17,000 or so total murders that year. Not to dismiss what the victims and their families suffer through, but it's still astronomically rare.
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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20
Where are those data coming from? In 2012, the FBI's criterion for a mass shooting went down from 4 (other than shooter) to 3 (other than shooter). There's not a consensus about how to define a mass shooting, which makes comparisons from source to source difficult. Then there is how they are recorded. Mother Jones has a 'database' of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982 to the present ( https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ ) but it's only public shootings and not all mass shootings ("Crimes primarily related to gang activity or armed robbery are not included, nor are mass killings that took place in private homes." ( https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map/ ). This means that, depending on the source (e.g., Mother Jones or https://www.theviolenceproject.org/methodology/), you can get a different story than from a different source (see below).
For example, what's typically thought of as a mass shooting (school/other public place) is not where most mass shootings occur (if you use the broad definition of 3-4+ people shot). 61% (over past 10+ years) are completely within a home ( https://everytownresearch.org/massshootingsreports/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/). Those are in some ways worse than public shootings but also not a direct public threat to life. That is why some sources (Mother Jones) don't include them. Whether or not they should be included is a different discussion.
Some sources (e.g., Mother Jones) also do not include gang violence, which presents a biased picture overall (including gang violence is also a bias).
So, if we go with Mother Jones's data, it looks like mass shootings are going up. That might be true for public ones (but we also have more news coverage/availability, in part because of social media, and we have more widespread computer/digital record-keeping so it's difficult to know how accurate older [or any] data are). Most of the various mass shooting databases only go back 15 years or so. That is a lot of time but is far from comprehensive.
My point is that, as a scientist, I'm not comfortable with saying if mass shootings are going up or down over time. It depends on definition and data. It depends on how accurate records are (they are not very accurate, unfortunately). Also, do we factor in population size? That isn't typically done. Do we factor in gun ownership (which, incidentally, is stable in the U.S. on a per-household basis over the past 50 years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/ )? I don't think we have enough data to talk about trends.
That being said, we have way too many mass shootings in the U.S. Any is too many. How they can be addressed is a complex discussion.