They count any shooting with 4 or more injured as a “mass shooting”.
I doubt that most people hear the phrase “mass shooting” and think “People at a party having too much to drink, get in an argument, the argument turns into a fight, guns are drawn, and 2 people on one side get shot and 2 people on the other side get shot.”
Example from my own back yard so to speak… 3 dudes from Texas show up for a marijuana buy from two brothers in Oregon. Buy goes bad, 2 Texans are killed, both brothers are killed, one dude walks away.
GVA DOES count that as a mass shooting. I don’t, for the simple reason that while those people were armed, and DID end up shooting 4 or more people, nobody went down there with guns with the INTENTION of shooting a bunch of people.
For me, and I wish more people defined it this way, a mass shooting is when one or more individuals show up armed in a populated area with the express intention of shooting as many people as possible.
That sort of shooting is FAR rarer. But nobody makes money off keeping people scared if that’s the definition.
The standards in America are fucking crazy. “Yeah bro my cousin was buying some weed, next thing you know 4 people shot dead, but that shouldn’t count” lmao.
lol the fact it’s just a casual story about a drug shoot out with 4 dead with a direct connection to OP and OP doesn’t think that’s weird is confusing as fuck to me
Right? I literally have never heard of anyone getting shot even if I count friends of friends of friends x10. And I spent half my adult life in connections with very dodgy circles.
Their “just another normal shooting” story would make national news for weeks if it happened here.
Got really sad this summer, relatives from the US visited and we went to the lake to do Stand up paddle. Upon seeing the life veste, I heard, looks like the vest we wear for school shooting drill, :/
Let’s push back the classification of mass shooting to lower the number. Ok, so we need one shooter and at least 10 dead. If people are only injured it shouldn’t count. And the victim can’t be criminal or have a criminal background. If drug or alcohol, not a mass shooting.
Super simple, look at the example I cited of a drug buy gone bad. That’s NOT a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive counts it as such even though it happened in a private home, not a public place, the shooters and victims involved were committing another crime when the shooting happened, and they were all there for the explicit purpose of committing that other crime, they didn’t go there to shoot each other.
If you can’t tell the difference between that and some psycho turning up in a grocery store to shoot as many people as possible, I don’t know what to tell you. The circumstances are completely different.
the difference is intent, not outcome. 4 people shot. mass shooting. don’t care why they shot each other. any other country doesn’t just have “drug deals gone bad oops 4 dead but it’s just another tuesday” unless it’s a literal organised crime thing that went REAL bad and would have greater repercussions than just a couple of hicks you know
People do care why they shot each other, because in one case the general public is at risk and in the other the general public is not at risk.
That needs to be the definition of a mass shooting. Let’s pull a hypothetical… if the Heaven’s Gate nutjobs had all shot each other instead of poisoning themselves (39 dead), would you consider that a mass shooting?
For me, it happened on private property, solely among members of a cult, did not involve the public or innocent victims… it’s a tragedy, it’s a failure of multiple social safety nets, but it wouldn’t be the same as someone killing 39 innocent, uninvolved, people in a school or shopping center.
Of course it should count as a mass shooting if 39 people shot themselves/each other. You’re looking for the definition of an act of terrorism, that has nothing to do with mass shooting. If we reverse your logic, and a guy kills 39 innocent bystanders but they used a bomb, would you then also call that a mass shooting?
Terrorism has a definition. It’s an act of violence in service to a political ideology. None of the mass shootings have been classified as terrorism, though I’d argue the ones in the predominately black supermarket or church and the one in the predominately hispanic Walmart probably should have been.
There is no widely-accepted definition of “mass shooting” and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, and familicides. The perpetrator of an ongoing mass shooting may be referred to as an active shooter.
In the United States, the country with the most mass shootings, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 defines mass killings as three or more killings in a single incident.[1] A Congressional Research Service report from 2013 specifies four or more killings on indiscriminate victims while excluding violence committed as a means to an end, such as robbery or terrorism.[2] Media outlets such as CNN and some crime violence research groups such as the Gun Violence Archive define mass shootings as involving “four or more shot (injured or killed) in a single incident, at the same general time and location, not including the shooter”.[3] Mother Jones magazine defines mass shootings as indiscriminate rampages killing three or more individuals excluding the perpetrator, gang violence, and armed robbery.[4][5] An Australian study from 2006 specifies five individuals killed.[6]
Your figure is off by two orders of magnitude, it’s ~48k gun deaths, including suicides (for 2022).
So about 5k more than your car accident figure.
And it’s odd to me you’re arguing the license angle; are you advocating for a licensing system like there are for cars, like written and applied tests a citizen must pass before gun ownership?
Unfortunately, we can’t require licensing. The Supreme Court already ruled that the core tenet of the 2nd Amendment is self defense and that can’t be burdened.
What I PERSONALLY would like to see is a full root cause analysis on every shooting and plugging the holes that allowed it to happen.
For example:
In the Maine shooting, he bought the guns he used 10 days before being reported for abberant behavior and being involuntary committed for 2 weeks.
Background checks wouldn’t work because he bought the guns before there were any reported problems.
Being involuntarily committed should have resulted in a seizure of all weapons. It did not. Why not? In most cases because seizures require a court ruling and if the commitment wasn’t court mandated, that doesn’t happen.
Bonus - if the commitment isn’t court mandated, that also won’t turn up on a background check, a common problem with other mass shooters.
That needs to change, and it doesn’t involve the 2nd amendment or a change in gun laws, it just has to expand what already happens in court adjudicated cases to non adjudicated cases.
Alternately, you push ALL mental health commitments through court to ensure guns are withdrawn and the commitment shows up on background checks.
Each death, individually, is a tragedy. Collectively? On a population of 330 MILLION? It’s literally NOTHING. That’s how statistics work.
In the big list of the top 59 ways Americans die, accidental gunshot is #59, fewer than those killed by cops, btw, which is #58, homicidal gunshot is #31 and suicidal gunshot is #21.
Right, but we’re not talking about gun-caused child deaths per capita, we’re talking about the leading cause of child death. If you do the actual math, it’s about 20%.
But of course you know that isn’t as compelling for your argument. Thank you for joining me for another lesson in lying with statistics.
What difference does it make why it happened, think of the impact on the community, neighbors, innocent bystanders, hearing or seeing that crap going down. That’s PTSD material. And the family of all the people involved, even if they were criminals, that’s an exponentially bigger impact than if one or two people are involved.
IMO you’re thinking of the difference between terrorism and violence. A mass shooting can be an act of terrorism (inflict harm on a large number of people), but it doesn’t have to, it’s the number (mass) involved, not the intent.
The intent very much matters. In the example I stated above, the intent on one side was to buy a bunch of weed and the intent on the other side was to sell a bunch of weed. Nobody walked into that looking to shoot someone, it just worked out that way.
Compared to someone hauling an AR-15 into a supermarket and shooting indiscriminately, that’s a huge difference in intent.
In the case of the public at large, the latter case results in “oh, shit, that could have been me!” but the former case it’s “Well, glad I’m not trying to illegally sell a bunch of weed to out of towners!”
Calling both a “mass shooting” does a disservice to the victims of actual mass shootings.
That and they make money by keeping people scared. “ZOMG! MORE MASS SHOOTINGS THAN DAYS IN THE YEAR!!!” and news orgs repeat it without questioning their methodology.
The mass shooting was the 565th in the U.S. in 2023 and the deadliest so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
GVA thinks someone stubbing a toe at a firing range is a mass shooting so whatever
The problem isn’t real because it hasn’t happened to zoboomafoo. Sigh
That’s an exaggeration, but you’re not far off.
They count any shooting with 4 or more injured as a “mass shooting”.
I doubt that most people hear the phrase “mass shooting” and think “People at a party having too much to drink, get in an argument, the argument turns into a fight, guns are drawn, and 2 people on one side get shot and 2 people on the other side get shot.”
Example from my own back yard so to speak… 3 dudes from Texas show up for a marijuana buy from two brothers in Oregon. Buy goes bad, 2 Texans are killed, both brothers are killed, one dude walks away.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/two-portland-brothers-two-marijuana-buyers-die-in-gun-battle-during-attempted-drug-ripoff.html
GVA DOES count that as a mass shooting. I don’t, for the simple reason that while those people were armed, and DID end up shooting 4 or more people, nobody went down there with guns with the INTENTION of shooting a bunch of people.
For me, and I wish more people defined it this way, a mass shooting is when one or more individuals show up armed in a populated area with the express intention of shooting as many people as possible.
That sort of shooting is FAR rarer. But nobody makes money off keeping people scared if that’s the definition.
bruh 4 people injured or killed in a single incident absolutely is a mass shooting. I’m trying to get my head around how you are downplaying this
The standards in America are fucking crazy. “Yeah bro my cousin was buying some weed, next thing you know 4 people shot dead, but that shouldn’t count” lmao.
lol the fact it’s just a casual story about a drug shoot out with 4 dead with a direct connection to OP and OP doesn’t think that’s weird is confusing as fuck to me
Right? I literally have never heard of anyone getting shot even if I count friends of friends of friends x10. And I spent half my adult life in connections with very dodgy circles.
Their “just another normal shooting” story would make national news for weeks if it happened here.
Got really sad this summer, relatives from the US visited and we went to the lake to do Stand up paddle. Upon seeing the life veste, I heard, looks like the vest we wear for school shooting drill, :/
Yeah, It’s so wild. Like, they are so delusional.
Let’s push back the classification of mass shooting to lower the number. Ok, so we need one shooter and at least 10 dead. If people are only injured it shouldn’t count. And the victim can’t be criminal or have a criminal background. If drug or alcohol, not a mass shooting.
Super simple, look at the example I cited of a drug buy gone bad. That’s NOT a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive counts it as such even though it happened in a private home, not a public place, the shooters and victims involved were committing another crime when the shooting happened, and they were all there for the explicit purpose of committing that other crime, they didn’t go there to shoot each other.
If you can’t tell the difference between that and some psycho turning up in a grocery store to shoot as many people as possible, I don’t know what to tell you. The circumstances are completely different.
the difference is intent, not outcome. 4 people shot. mass shooting. don’t care why they shot each other. any other country doesn’t just have “drug deals gone bad oops 4 dead but it’s just another tuesday” unless it’s a literal organised crime thing that went REAL bad and would have greater repercussions than just a couple of hicks you know
People do care why they shot each other, because in one case the general public is at risk and in the other the general public is not at risk.
That needs to be the definition of a mass shooting. Let’s pull a hypothetical… if the Heaven’s Gate nutjobs had all shot each other instead of poisoning themselves (39 dead), would you consider that a mass shooting?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven's_Gate_(religious_group)
For me, it happened on private property, solely among members of a cult, did not involve the public or innocent victims… it’s a tragedy, it’s a failure of multiple social safety nets, but it wouldn’t be the same as someone killing 39 innocent, uninvolved, people in a school or shopping center.
The general public is definitely at risk if a drug buy goes bad a bullets start flying all over the place.
This one happened at a private house, still classified as a mass shooting.
Of course it should count as a mass shooting if 39 people shot themselves/each other. You’re looking for the definition of an act of terrorism, that has nothing to do with mass shooting. If we reverse your logic, and a guy kills 39 innocent bystanders but they used a bomb, would you then also call that a mass shooting?
Terrorism has a definition. It’s an act of violence in service to a political ideology. None of the mass shootings have been classified as terrorism, though I’d argue the ones in the predominately black supermarket or church and the one in the predominately hispanic Walmart probably should have been.
there is no one definition
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Huh? Are you saying that the white school/mall shooters weren’t aware that killing people is illegal?
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Idk, I kind of like this one:
The definition of mass shooting shouldn’t detract from the fact that 500+ shootings 4+ injured is too many
500+ shootings in a country with 330 million people and 400 million guns is a rounding error.
Last year there were 42,795 fatal car accidents, we have 233 million licensed drivers. 85 times more than shootings with 4 or more injured.
https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/auto-insurance/fatal-car-crash-statistics/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191653/number-of-licensed-drivers-in-the-us-since-1988/
Your figure is off by two orders of magnitude, it’s ~48k gun deaths, including suicides (for 2022).
So about 5k more than your car accident figure.
And it’s odd to me you’re arguing the license angle; are you advocating for a licensing system like there are for cars, like written and applied tests a citizen must pass before gun ownership?
Unfortunately, we can’t require licensing. The Supreme Court already ruled that the core tenet of the 2nd Amendment is self defense and that can’t be burdened.
What I PERSONALLY would like to see is a full root cause analysis on every shooting and plugging the holes that allowed it to happen.
For example:
In the Maine shooting, he bought the guns he used 10 days before being reported for abberant behavior and being involuntary committed for 2 weeks.
Background checks wouldn’t work because he bought the guns before there were any reported problems.
Being involuntarily committed should have resulted in a seizure of all weapons. It did not. Why not? In most cases because seizures require a court ruling and if the commitment wasn’t court mandated, that doesn’t happen.
Bonus - if the commitment isn’t court mandated, that also won’t turn up on a background check, a common problem with other mass shooters.
That needs to change, and it doesn’t involve the 2nd amendment or a change in gun laws, it just has to expand what already happens in court adjudicated cases to non adjudicated cases.
Alternately, you push ALL mental health commitments through court to ensure guns are withdrawn and the commitment shows up on background checks.
And we all know the Supreme Court never reverses a decision. That’s why abortion is still legal nationwide.
All it takes is 50 years and a polar shift in opinion…
What’s the number one cause of death for children in America? Is that a rounding error?
“In 2021, there were 2,571 child deaths due to firearms”
https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
2,571 / 330,000,000 = 0.0000077909
Yeah, pretty much.
Jesus, at least you’re open with your psychopathy.
3k dead kids in a “first world” country, to something so easily avoided, is monstrous.
Happy to see you say it loud and proud, fuck those dead kids. Makes it easier to identify y’all.
Each death, individually, is a tragedy. Collectively? On a population of 330 MILLION? It’s literally NOTHING. That’s how statistics work.
In the big list of the top 59 ways Americans die, accidental gunshot is #59, fewer than those killed by cops, btw, which is #58, homicidal gunshot is #31 and suicidal gunshot is #21.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/death-index-top-50-ways-americans-die/
Right, but we’re not talking about gun-caused child deaths per capita, we’re talking about the leading cause of child death. If you do the actual math, it’s about 20%.
But of course you know that isn’t as compelling for your argument. Thank you for joining me for another lesson in lying with statistics.
https://usafacts.org/data-projects/child-death
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What difference does it make why it happened, think of the impact on the community, neighbors, innocent bystanders, hearing or seeing that crap going down. That’s PTSD material. And the family of all the people involved, even if they were criminals, that’s an exponentially bigger impact than if one or two people are involved.
IMO you’re thinking of the difference between terrorism and violence. A mass shooting can be an act of terrorism (inflict harm on a large number of people), but it doesn’t have to, it’s the number (mass) involved, not the intent.
The intent very much matters. In the example I stated above, the intent on one side was to buy a bunch of weed and the intent on the other side was to sell a bunch of weed. Nobody walked into that looking to shoot someone, it just worked out that way.
Compared to someone hauling an AR-15 into a supermarket and shooting indiscriminately, that’s a huge difference in intent.
In the case of the public at large, the latter case results in “oh, shit, that could have been me!” but the former case it’s “Well, glad I’m not trying to illegally sell a bunch of weed to out of towners!”
Calling both a “mass shooting” does a disservice to the victims of actual mass shootings.
I’m pretty sure GVA lumps every shooting together because then the only common factor, and then the only solution, is the gun itself
That and they make money by keeping people scared. “ZOMG! MORE MASS SHOOTINGS THAN DAYS IN THE YEAR!!!” and news orgs repeat it without questioning their methodology.
Need to do something about all these black mass shooters.
(if it’s not obvious that’s sarcasm.)
We’re almost at the end of the year. And I don’t think this incident was as deadly as incidents in previous years, so uh… good job guys? I guess?
We’ve still got two months to go. At the average rate so far, if that rate holds, could result in ~56 more mass shootings before the end of the year.