Mass public shootings in the United States are on the rise, says new report

[Dubious]

August 5, 2015 - 3:56PM
Meghan Hoyer

A memorial to commemorate the 26 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims - 20 children and six adults - on the one year anniversary of the shooting rampage in 2013. Photo: Carlo Allegri


Mass public shootings in the United States have increased in frequency from 1.1 a year to 4.5 a year since the 1970s, according to a new report.

The report, by the Congressional Research Services, found that in the 1970s, mass public shootings killed roughly six people a year and injured two. By the 2010s, there were an average of 33 deaths in mass shootings each year, with 28 additional people injured.

Dylann Roof was arrested over the shooting deaths of nine people at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June. Photo: Reuters


The figures come after a particularly grisly July, when five mass killings - including a public shooting at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, military office that killed five service members - occurred in a span of eight days.

Mass killings are defined as singular or events with at least four victims who die within a short period of time. In mass public shootings, all the victims are killed with firearms in a public location such as a workplace, house of worship, school or restaurant.

The research found that a dozen mass public shootings since 1970 have had double-digit death tolls. Seven of those have occurred since 2007.

An American flag flies alongside a sign in honor of the four Marines shot and killed in Chattanooga, Tennessee in July. Photo: Reuters

A criminologist who studies mass killings called the report the "most comprehensive" look at the issue in the past 15 years.

"It deserves our attention," said Grant Duwe, a Minnesota criminologist whose own research provided one source of data for the study. "Hopefully their report if nothing else will foster a more honest dialogue about the patterns and prevalence about mass shootings."

Using FBI figures, Duwe's data on mass shootings and an ongoing project at the news organisation USA Today that tracks mass killings, the CRS researchers found that in the 15-year period between 1999 and 2013, there were 317 mass shootings with 1,554 victims.

Among their findings:

* On average, 4.4 mass killings a year between 1999 and 2013 could be defined as mass public shootings.

* Nearly double that number each year could be classified as familicides -- the killings of family members or domestic partners in private places such as the home.

* Of the mass public shootings, the assailant carried a single firearm in more than half the cases. In a quarter of them, an assault weapon was used.

* Only 20 of the 68 offenders in mass public shootings were arrested. The majority killed themselves or were killed by police.

A flurry of statistics, gun control proposals and rhetoric often come out in the aftermath of the large-scale homicides, particularly public shootings such as the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and the June killing of nine African American people at a Charleston, South Carolina church.

The report says, however, that federal data is lacking to help guide a public policy conversation. USA Today's 'Behind the Bloodshed' project, which has tracked mass killings from 2006 to the present, found that the FBI's homicide data on mass killings had an accuracy rate of only 57 per cent, with many major events missing and others mistakenly included through problems with mis-coding or counting injured victims among the dead.

"With improved data, policymakers would arguably have additional vantage points from which to asses the legislative proposals that are inevitably made in the wake of these tragedies," the report says.

The report suggests that the US Congress direct a federal law-enforcement agency to improve the collection of data on multiple-victim homicides, and that it instruct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to annually report on mass shootings, including data on how the suspect acquired the weapon, the victim-offender relationship, and offenders' histories of mental illness and domestic violence.

CRS researchers are non-partisan and don't comment publicly on published reports.

USA Today



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[RazorMC]

Too much stress, too little parenting, too much state interference in parenting and way too much TV.
Everything in excess, that's been the American way.

 

[VCheng]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/08/graphics-americas-guns

In graphics: America's guns
To keep and bear arms
Aug 7th 2015, 7:47 BY THE DATA TEAM

WITH one of the highest murder rates among OECD countries—second only to Mexico—America retains its reputation as a disproportionately dangerous country. The number of violent assaults in America is comparable to those of other western countries, yet murders are much more common. The prevalence of guns goes a long way toward explaining America's terrible record—they are used in two-thirds of all murders. Americans are five times as likely to be murdered as Brits but over 40 times as likely to be murdered with a gun.



America has become a much safer place over the past two decades however, but public sentiment has yet to catch on to the fact. In 1993, near the peak of America's crime wave, 7 out of every 100,000 people aged 12 and up were gunned down. That number has since halved. But guns play a large role in suicides too. In 2013, 21,175 Americans killed themselves with guns, while 11,208 were killed by others. Men are four times as likely to kill themselves despite making fewer attempts, in no small part because their preferred method (guns) of suicide is so much more reliable than the alternatives. The rate at which people kill themselves with guns has increased since 2006.

There is no national database of gun ownership, because the gun lobby sees that as a first step towards disarmament. The number of guns in America therefore has to be inferred from survey data, commercial records and background checks. None of these measures are perfect: a gun owner may not necessarily need a background check if he or she buys a weapon at a gun show; a customer may have one background check and buy three weapons; or have a background check and decide not to buy any weapon at all. Put them together, though, and these different sources become more useful. In 2007 the Small Arms Survey estimated that 270 million guns were in the hands of American civilians, or 0.9 per person. That number has almost surely risen since. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes annual data on how many guns are manufactured and (legally) imported in the United States. Their figures suggest a sharp increase in gun sales since Barack Obama was elected president. In 2013 about 16 million new guns entered circulation, FBI background checks corroborate this trend.

Mr Obama’s presidency has stirred up anxiety among gun owners, which gun makers have profited from handsomely. The share prices of America’s two largest publically traded gun manufacturers, Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson, have increased over 700% and 450% respectively since Mr Obama was elected.The increase in sales seem to be driven by a relatively small slice of the population—individuals seemingly amassing personal stockpiles—as The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey shows that an ever smaller percentage of households have guns.

What keeps America’s firearms in headlines around the world (and perhaps also what keeps news of decreasing overall gun murders out of them) are mass shootings. In the last decade, media reports of incidents such as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the June 2015 Charleston church killings have resonated around the world with increased frequency. Even so, such atrocities are still drastically underreported. There’s no comprehensive government database of mass shootings as there is with homicides in general, and for every Sandy Hook, dozens fail to make get the country's attention. One group that tries to make up for the gap in the numbers is the Stanford University Geospatial Centre, which aggregates data from the FBI and from news reports. Their findings support the idea that mass shootings are indeed on the rise in the United States.

Despite recent tragedies, support for stronger gun control has wavered. A 2014 Gallup poll showed that just 26% of people wanted to ban handguns, down from 60% in 1959. Moreover, an increasing number of Americans believe that having a gun in the house would make them safer. Some states have actually relaxed their gun laws in recent years. Even given the link between guns and gun violence, which seems obvious to the rest of the world, America is unlikely to implement significant gun control in the near future.