In contrast to more recent mass shootings, the one that took place in San Bernardino is the first since Columbine to involve more than one of these types of shooters and, perhaps more surprisingly, the first to have involved a female shooter.
Advertisement
It was the 352nd mass shooting in the U.S. this year, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, compiled by Reddit users, which defines “mass shooting” as four or more people either killed or injured, including the gunman. According to the research, the days separating mass shooting occurrence went from on average 200 days during the period of 1983 to 2011 to 64 days since 2011.
Gun violence overall: Even mass shootings that do command national attention only account for a sliver of the deaths from gun violence that occur each day in America.
News- Despite only accounting for five percent of the global population, an astounding 31 percent of the world’s mass shootings occur in the U.S.
Two online databases that use news reports to track shootings where four or more are wounded or killed found that there have been 355 such shootings since January, spanning 221 cities and 47 states. Tens of millions of Americans, however, do not own guns. For starters, it’s important to realize that there has never been one universally accepted definition of a “mass shooting”.
The FBI used to consider someone a “mass murderer” if they killed four or more people during one event, regardless of weapons used.
The laws, whose sections included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons, were stymied in Congress after staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun-rights lobby groups.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Send our thoughts and prayers to the families of those who’ve been killed and to pray for a speedy recovery for those who were injured during this awful attack.
The numbers do show that more restrictive gun laws make a difference. With these provisions, most United States active shooters would have been denied the purchase of a firearm.
Other researchers have also been including domestic violence and gang-related shootings as mass shootings for years. And I think so many Americans sometimes feel as if there’s nothing we can do about it. We are fortunate to have an extraordinary combination of law enforcement and intelligence and military that work every single day to keep us safe.
Advertisement
“There’s a sense of helplessness, but it’s in some ways misplaced”, says Jonathan Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn.
