“defines a mass shooting as an incident with at least four injuries or deaths, not including the shooter.”
Which isn’t really a good definition. “Mass shooting” invokes an image of someone showing up at a school, church, grocery store, some other public place, with the sole intent of killing as many people as possible.
That’s not what’s being tracked here.
The classic example tracked by the Gun Violence Archive is this story from my own town:
Two brothers had an illegal marijuana grow. 3 guys from Texas roll up at their house to buy the weed.
It’s not clear what went wrong, but words were had, guns were drawn, both brothers were shot and killed, 2/3 Texans were shot and killed. 3rd was arrested later.
No, that’s pretty average drug crime right there. No innocent victims, everyone involved was engaging in illegal activity BEFORE anyone got shot.
Going through the stories on the Gun Violence Archive, you’ll see a lot of arguments turned into bar fights turned into shootings and so on. Parties that got out of hand, stuff like that. Scenarios that are completely different from some idiot intending to shoot up a school, or target a minority demographic.
Lumping together all of that under the “Mass Shooting” umbrella sure gets people scared though.
I’m not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?
Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?
If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don’t have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?
Intent matters because in a true mass shooting event, the mass shooting is the intent.
In an argument turned into a fight with multiple shooters, nobody went out that day looking to shoot people. It turned out that way, but that wasn’t their goal when they left the house.
Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.
To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?
I’ll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.
In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.
You are complaining about this organization’s yardstick, but I don’t hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.
It’s like explaining the dufference between murder and manslaughter, it’s the degree of the crime that counts.
If you accept that there is a difference between shooting people as a crime of passion, and shooting people by a systemic hunting of other human beings, there doesn’t need to be a “but why is it different?”
It’s different because one, anyone could fall victim to given enough alcohol and anger, and the other requires someone to be fundamentally broken as a human being.
Are you saying that we should have Allowlists vs. Denylists for types of gun violence that are acceptable? This seems to be the fundamental premise upon which we disagree…
From my POV, intention is immaterial because there are no ‘good’ gun deaths, so splitting hairs has no values.
It sounds to me like you’re saying if you go to a mall and have a mass shooting in a totally sober state, that’s bad, but if you get hopped up on bath salts and then have a good old fashioned shotgun rampage, that’s ok and we shouldn’t count those ones…
I’m saying that the phrase “mass shooting” should only be applied to a situation where the shooting is the reason for the conflict, not an argument, robbery, drug crime, or gang crime.
Further, I’d argue that conflating them all together so you can pump up statistics and make people scared denigrates all the victions of actual mass shootings like Uvalde and Sandy Hook.
… Why are you saying and arguing those things, nobody cares about what you think about the way the statistics are counted when you can compare the data to other countries without guns and without any types of shooting events, mass or not.
Do you not understand what all of these different people are trying to explain to you?
Because all the countries with strict gun laws that you all love to try and compare the USA with, also have strong social safety nets and are not as diverse as the USA…why don’t you compare it with say Mexico or Brazil? Both have super strong gun laws but have no real safety nets and surprise…still have tons of firearm related deaths.
Apples to Apples. You can’t compare what happens in other countries to what happens in the US, first because we have the 2nd Amendment and second, because we don’t have universal health care. :(
Oh, right good call, I guess we just have to complain about the way they count the bodies on the internet instead of actually trying to do anything about the thousands of dead children on the hands of the American people and politicians. Totally good call lol.
The post soecifically is about counting shootings and not proposing solutions, if you want to talk solutions I do have some good ideas about that too.
First, people need to get it out of their heads that banning guns is the answer. It can’t be done because of the 2nd Amendment, and changing the 2nd Amendment is a political impossibility. You have to start by getting 290 votes in the House, the same body who needed 15 tries to get a simple 218 vote majority to pick their own leader. 290 on guns is out of reach.
So what DO we do? Well, how about a root cause analysis of each shooting? Let’s determine what systemic failures allowed each shooting to happen and make corrections so it doesn’t happen again.
Like that guy in Maine - Police knew FOR MONTHS that he was a potential danger. The military had warned them. He had psych evals backing it up. The cops decided he was too dangerous to engage with and did nothing. Even though Maine has a yellow flag law for weapon confiscation.
Apparently too dangerous to engage with so they just let him walk around in public? 🤔 Well, there’s your problem.
Shooting after shooting we find these people weren’t unknown to authorities, their lives were filled with more red flags than a May Day Parade, but nothing was done.
First, people need to get it out of their heads that banning guns is the answer.
Right, changing a law is impossible, and looking at other country’s examples is impossible because Americans are all born with itchy trigger fingers lol.
Given our current divisions? Yes, changing the law is impossible. We saw what it takes to get 290 Congressmen to agree… George Santos. You’ll never get a vote like that on guns, or any other hot button issue, abortion, Supreme Court size, term limits… none of it. It’s a non-starter.
No, I’m saying you need to differentiate crimes where someone went out intending to shoot a bunch of people, from crimes where a bunch of people ended up being shot through bad circumstances.
It’s the difference between 4 people dying in a car accident vs. someone intentionally driving over 4 people. It’s a different class of crime.
Sure, but it’s really difficult, if not impossible, to define that in objective terms. A shooting involving 4 or more people is easy to collect all the data on. Trying to search for all shootings where someone showed up to an event with the intent to kill many people isn’t really objective or trackable.
The precise inclusion criteria are disputed, and there is no broadly accepted definition. Only shootings that have Wikipedia articles of their own are included in this list.
Yeah, no. Not really. It’s useful, but it’s a much smaller subset. This is all notable mass shootings, not all mass shootings. As the article later goes on to describe, the definition is in contention. There are many different definitions that may include far fewer or far more events, just because of the nature of it it can’t be perfect.
The definition is evolving, for the better in my opinion. The below paper describes some thoughts in the realm which seek to develop a more inclusive definition.
Mass outcome or mass intent? A proposal for an intent-focused, no-minimum casualty count definition of public mass shooting incidents
First, researchers should expand their victim count inclusion criterion to gain valuable insight for public mass shooting prevention, intervention, and harm mitigation. The proposed definition of public mass shootings highlights mass intent instead of the completion of the shooting. Datasets with minimum victim counts are only including cases that occurred in the absence of mitigating situational factors, like fast intervention or strong situational crime prevention. There is always the potential for the environment and the situation to influence the incident outcome, and open-source scholars implementing a minimum casualty criterion might be systematically excluding cases characterized by mass intent and protective environments. Not only does this affect comparisons of environmental and mitigation factors, but it is an especially problematic source of selection bias for scholars aiming to understand the warning signs, behaviors, and psychosocial profiles of public mass shooting perpetrators.
Second, we advocate for scholars to use the current public mass shooting definition and completed, attempted, failed, and foiled outcome terminology. Critics may argue that our proposed definition more so aligns with an active shooter incident than a public mass shooting. However, we believe that it is beneficial to combine these two types of public gun violence involving random/symbolic victims into a single public mass shooting concept differentiated by outcomes. This will not only strengthen the rigor of empirical research, but also reduce public confusion. Currently, the mass media and general public are familiar with the phrases “public mass shooting” and “active shooting”, and understand both to be incidents of public, predatory gun violence committed by a highly motivated offender. We believe our definition, with its careful distinction between foiled, failed, attempted, and completed outcomes, could address some of the “mass confusion” (Fox & Levin, 2022) regarding public mass shootings.
Critics may argue that our proposal for an intent-focused, no minimum casualty count definition could contribute to journalistic abuse and further public confusion or concern. For comparison, after high-profile public mass shootings, media outlets often cite the number of mass shootings in America using the Gun Violence Archive and Mass Shooting Tracker data – which includes all mass shootings (i.e., felony and family), not just public mass shootings (Silva & Greene-Colozzi, 2019). The media thereby conflates all mass shootings with public mass shootings in the public consciousness. We do not want a consequence of this proposed public mass shooting definition to be the media’s inflation of the problem, given the increased number of incidents included in future research and datasets using this definition. To this end, we stress the importance of researchers using the completed public mass shooting terminology when referencing traditionally considered incidents - involving four or more fatalities – in research and during media interviews. In other words, like the usage of public mass shootings - which has recently become more popular in media usage - we are attempting to also incorporate completed public mass shootings into popular consciousness, to address public confusion and concerns.
Edit: I should add I have no beef with the GVA, and I don’t really think the flack it gets in this thread is warranted, but in this context the distinction I think can help. This is by no means GVA’s fault, terms evolve.
“defines a mass shooting as an incident with at least four injuries or deaths, not including the shooter.”
Which isn’t really a good definition. “Mass shooting” invokes an image of someone showing up at a school, church, grocery store, some other public place, with the sole intent of killing as many people as possible.
That’s not what’s being tracked here.
The classic example tracked by the Gun Violence Archive is this story from my own town:
Two brothers had an illegal marijuana grow. 3 guys from Texas roll up at their house to buy the weed.
It’s not clear what went wrong, but words were had, guns were drawn, both brothers were shot and killed, 2/3 Texans were shot and killed. 3rd was arrested later.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/two-portland-brothers-two-marijuana-buyers-die-in-gun-battle-during-attempted-drug-ripoff.html
Gun Violence Archive - ZOMG! Mass shooting!
No, that’s pretty average drug crime right there. No innocent victims, everyone involved was engaging in illegal activity BEFORE anyone got shot.
Going through the stories on the Gun Violence Archive, you’ll see a lot of arguments turned into bar fights turned into shootings and so on. Parties that got out of hand, stuff like that. Scenarios that are completely different from some idiot intending to shoot up a school, or target a minority demographic.
Lumping together all of that under the “Mass Shooting” umbrella sure gets people scared though.
I’m not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?
Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?
If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don’t have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?
Intent matters because in a true mass shooting event, the mass shooting is the intent.
In an argument turned into a fight with multiple shooters, nobody went out that day looking to shoot people. It turned out that way, but that wasn’t their goal when they left the house.
Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.
To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?
I’ll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.
In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.
You are complaining about this organization’s yardstick, but I don’t hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.
It’s like explaining the dufference between murder and manslaughter, it’s the degree of the crime that counts.
If you accept that there is a difference between shooting people as a crime of passion, and shooting people by a systemic hunting of other human beings, there doesn’t need to be a “but why is it different?”
It’s different because one, anyone could fall victim to given enough alcohol and anger, and the other requires someone to be fundamentally broken as a human being.
Are you saying that we should have Allowlists vs. Denylists for types of gun violence that are acceptable? This seems to be the fundamental premise upon which we disagree…
From my POV, intention is immaterial because there are no ‘good’ gun deaths, so splitting hairs has no values.
It sounds to me like you’re saying if you go to a mall and have a mass shooting in a totally sober state, that’s bad, but if you get hopped up on bath salts and then have a good old fashioned shotgun rampage, that’s ok and we shouldn’t count those ones…
I’m saying that the phrase “mass shooting” should only be applied to a situation where the shooting is the reason for the conflict, not an argument, robbery, drug crime, or gang crime.
Further, I’d argue that conflating them all together so you can pump up statistics and make people scared denigrates all the victions of actual mass shootings like Uvalde and Sandy Hook.
… Why are you saying and arguing those things, nobody cares about what you think about the way the statistics are counted when you can compare the data to other countries without guns and without any types of shooting events, mass or not.
Do you not understand what all of these different people are trying to explain to you?
Sure, and all these different people haven’t said a single thing that counters what I’m saying, telling, isn’t it?
Because all the countries with strict gun laws that you all love to try and compare the USA with, also have strong social safety nets and are not as diverse as the USA…why don’t you compare it with say Mexico or Brazil? Both have super strong gun laws but have no real safety nets and surprise…still have tons of firearm related deaths.
You ready to do comparisons to other developed countries yet or what?
Sure, give me another developed country with the equivalent of the 2nd Amendment.
Why lol?
Apples to Apples. You can’t compare what happens in other countries to what happens in the US, first because we have the 2nd Amendment and second, because we don’t have universal health care. :(
Oh, right good call, I guess we just have to complain about the way they count the bodies on the internet instead of actually trying to do anything about the thousands of dead children on the hands of the American people and politicians. Totally good call lol.
The post soecifically is about counting shootings and not proposing solutions, if you want to talk solutions I do have some good ideas about that too.
First, people need to get it out of their heads that banning guns is the answer. It can’t be done because of the 2nd Amendment, and changing the 2nd Amendment is a political impossibility. You have to start by getting 290 votes in the House, the same body who needed 15 tries to get a simple 218 vote majority to pick their own leader. 290 on guns is out of reach.
So what DO we do? Well, how about a root cause analysis of each shooting? Let’s determine what systemic failures allowed each shooting to happen and make corrections so it doesn’t happen again.
Like that guy in Maine - Police knew FOR MONTHS that he was a potential danger. The military had warned them. He had psych evals backing it up. The cops decided he was too dangerous to engage with and did nothing. Even though Maine has a yellow flag law for weapon confiscation.
Apparently too dangerous to engage with so they just let him walk around in public? 🤔 Well, there’s your problem.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/authorities-knew-maine-shooter-was-a-threat-but-felt-confronting-him-was-unsafe-video-shows/
Shooting after shooting we find these people weren’t unknown to authorities, their lives were filled with more red flags than a May Day Parade, but nothing was done.
Right, changing a law is impossible, and looking at other country’s examples is impossible because Americans are all born with itchy trigger fingers lol.
Given our current divisions? Yes, changing the law is impossible. We saw what it takes to get 290 Congressmen to agree… George Santos. You’ll never get a vote like that on guns, or any other hot button issue, abortion, Supreme Court size, term limits… none of it. It’s a non-starter.
Compare Mexico and Brazil to the USA both have super strict gun laws but lack safety nets for their citizens…
Those are the 2 countries that you wanna be lumped in with?
No safety nets for their citizens, but strong gun control… again more like the US policies than the EU.
Mass shootings are so common in America that people are now saying a shooting with four injuries or deaths is too normal to count 😂 😭
No, I’m saying you need to differentiate crimes where someone went out intending to shoot a bunch of people, from crimes where a bunch of people ended up being shot through bad circumstances.
It’s the difference between 4 people dying in a car accident vs. someone intentionally driving over 4 people. It’s a different class of crime.
Are you under the impression that groups of four or more people are being shot by accident?
Absolutely, people get accidentally shot all the time.
If you have two angry groups of people shooting at each other I doubt they’re doing much in the way of good target discipline.
Not in my country 😂
One shot is an accident. If you keep shooting it stops being an accident!
Americans are not okay folks!
Sure, but it’s really difficult, if not impossible, to define that in objective terms. A shooting involving 4 or more people is easy to collect all the data on. Trying to search for all shootings where someone showed up to an event with the intent to kill many people isn’t really objective or trackable.
Wikipedia seems to do OK:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
Yeah, no. Not really. It’s useful, but it’s a much smaller subset. This is all notable mass shootings, not all mass shootings. As the article later goes on to describe, the definition is in contention. There are many different definitions that may include far fewer or far more events, just because of the nature of it it can’t be perfect.
For me, I would define a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not counting the perpetrator, where the shooting itself was the objective.
Not a robbery gone bad, not a drug crime, not a gang fight, or a bar fight.
Someone went to a location with the sole intent of shooting as many people as possible.
Most people don’t give a fuck about your definition.
I’d wager most people hear “mass shooting” and think it’s some guy at a school or a mall with an AR-15 and that’s absolutely not what’s happening.
I don’t give a fuck what you’d wager?
Because someone out there is trying desperately to manipulate public opinion. I’m encouraging you to see what they’re doing here.
The definition is evolving, for the better in my opinion. The below paper describes some thoughts in the realm which seek to develop a more inclusive definition.
Mass outcome or mass intent? A proposal for an intent-focused, no-minimum casualty count definition of public mass shooting incidents
https://jmvr.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/A-Proposal-for-an-Intent-Focused-No-Minimum-Casualty-Count-Definition-of-Public-Mass-Shooting-Incidents-Greene-Colozzi-Silva.pdf
Edit: I should add I have no beef with the GVA, and I don’t really think the flack it gets in this thread is warranted, but in this context the distinction I think can help. This is by no means GVA’s fault, terms evolve.