How Many Mass Shootings This Year? There’s No Consensus

There’s a very good reason why the gun control debate reignites after every mass shooting, just as it has after the massacre in San Bernardino. There have been 336 days.

Obama began demanding tougher gun control as the search for the shooting suspects was still underway, calling for “common-sense gun safety laws, stronger background checks”, and adding, “There are steps we can take to make Americans safer, and we should come together on a bipartisan level to make these rare as opposed to normal”.

A former police officer, Mr. O’Donnell said about half of mass shootings are finished before the first officer arrives, given that “these are people that are coming in to kill”. More guns. More mass shootings. In 2011, the a year ago for which we have numbers, the United Kingdom endured 146 gun deaths total – or 2.3 gun deaths per million people.

Assigning motive rationalizes violence, and shifts the focus from the facts – 14 dead, 21 wounded, with guns that were acquired legally thanks to the sustained efforts of the National Rifle Association – to speculation about individuals and their individual motivations.

“I do think that as the investigation moves forward, it’s going to be important for all of us, including legislatures, to see what we can do to make sure that when individuals decide they want to do somebody harm, we’re making it a little harder for them to do it”, he said.

Our country is in the throes of a gun violence epidemic.

Every year the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence looks at just that and grades states on their laws regulating guns.

With authorities still in the process of responding to an active shooting that claimed multiple victims Wednesday afternoon in San Bernardino, California, presidential candidates are weighing in on the attack at the Inland Regional Center.

The problem, in other words, is us. “Fear is running rampant”, criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University said in an e-mail.

Mother Jones doesn’t include that, since fewer than four people were killed.

A lack of a common definition of what encompasses a mass incident complicates the ability of criminologists to reach a consensus on how much of an increase 2015’s tally represents – or what the historical average for mass shootings has been. But starting in 2013, federal statutes defined “mass killing” as three or more people killed, regardless of weapons. He says that by including situations where the shooter knows the victims – such as domestic or gang violence – the rate of annual mass shootings actually declined slightly from 2011 to 2014 when compared with the previous four years.

And while media coverage has increased awareness, he argues that it hasn’t resulted in public apathy. “But rest assured that we will get to the bottom of this”.

We should be doing more on both.

Dr. Jeremy Richman, founder and director of The Avielle Foundation pointed out that his agency is shocked at this recent incident and just sick thinking about it. He reiterated the need for the general public to eschew violence and embrace peace and constructive endeavors, and never to consider recourse to the gun as the way to solve the world’s problems.