Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent
After a man opened fire at Los Angeles’s airport a few months ago, friends and coworkers undoubtedly turned to each other shaking their heads: Could this really be happening again, so soon? Are these things getting more frequent, or am I imagining it?
You’re not imagining it, according to a new study obtained by Yahoo! News on Thursday. The report, which is set for release in a Federal Bureau of Investigations bulletin next week, finds that mass shootings have indeed become more common. They have spiked from five a year between 2000 and 2008 to 16 a year from 2009 to 2012.
The report also sheds some light on who is committing mass shootings, and how: 94 percent of gunmen are men, though they range significantly in age. Forty percent of mass shootings happen at businesses, while 29 percent take place at schools. Fifty-nine percent of the time, the gunmen use handguns, and 26 percent of the time rifles.
They claim, on average, two lives.
“Mass shootings” are defined by the authors of the report, who are from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University, as incidents where a gunman opens fire in a public place with the motivation of killing many, at least one of whom is “unrelated” to the gunman. This means the data does not include gang violence or crimes where shooting is a byproduct.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/01/02/3113171/mass-shootings-speeding/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Let me preface this by repeating that I want to see a host of measures to reduce violence in America, including sensible gun control legislation, most of California's laws applied nationally.
OK.
I was reading applegrove's interesting post in the gun control reform activism group: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12625349
And attached to the source article was this graph of "mass shooting" incidents and number of victims by year from 1976 through 2010.
I was thinking that it seems to be mostly flat with maybe a bit of an upward trend and then it struck me.
That graph doesn't take into account the growth in population over that time frame; it's not per capital, it's just raw overall data.
In 2010 there were 40% more citizens than in 1976 but guess what? The shooting incidents numbers haven't risen by 40%-- they haven't risen at all, and the number of victims has risen only slightly.
Adjusted for population growth or measured per-capita, the number of incidents and victims of mass shootings, then, has fallen by as much as 40%.
If I'm statistically wrong, and I'm pretty sure I'm not, please feel free to refute the above.
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