It seems so because the media hypes the bad guys and dismisses the good guys.
Decided to do a little research.
The history of mass
shootings in the U.S.
Friday, January 11, 2013 8:24am ❙ LOCAL NEWS
NATION / WORLD
“Half of all mass killings in the United States have
occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in
2005, half of all of them in the history of the
country.”
— Former President Bill Clinton, at the
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan.
9, 2013
A colleague spotted this eye-popping statistic by
the former president and wondered if it was
correct.
Clinton signed the assault weapons ban into law
in 1994, but it expired after 10 years and was not
renewed. Even supporters have said it was
riddled with loopholes, limiting its eectiveness.
But the rash of mass shootings in recent years,
including the Newtown, Conn., tragedy, have
provided new impetus for a renewed ban.
So let’s dig into the data and see what we nd.
With gun shootings, you immediately get into some denitional issues.
Depending on how one denes a “mass public shooting,” the answers
might turn out to be dierent. There is also surprisingly little historical data
about mass murder in the United States to go back all the way to the nation’s
founding.
Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota
Department of Corrections, assembled a data set going back 100 years for a
2007 book titled,
“Mass Murder in the United States: A History.” He used
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the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, which date from 1976, and then
supplemented the FBI reports with news reports (principally The New York
Times) dating from 1900.
Duwe says the Times turned out to be a relatively reliable guide for mass
murders across the country, since much of the post-1976 information also
turned up in the contemporaneous FBI reports. As far as he knows, he is the
only person who has assembled such a historical data set.
According to his research, he has identied 156 mass public shootings in the
United States in the past 100 years.
Duwe denes a mass public shooting as an incident in which four or more
victims are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours — in the workplace,
schools, restaurants and other public places – excluding shootings in
connection with crimes such as robbery, drugs or gangs. (Note that this
would exclude a number of “mass murders” that sometimes get lumped
into the data, such as the sniper who killed 10 people over a three-week
period in the Washington region in 2002.)
Since 2005, when the assault ban expired, there have been 32 such mass
public shootings, including seven in 2012, Duwe said. So that’s just over 20
percent of all mass public shootings, which is much less than Clinton’s 50
percent.
Here’s a breakdown per decade of Duwe’s data. It is important to note that
these are raw gures; the United States had far fewer people 50 or 100 years
ago.
Mass Public Shootings per Decade
1900s : 0
1910s: 2
1920s: 2
1930s: 9
1940s: 8
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1950s: 1
1960s: 6
1970s: 13
1980s: 32
1990s: 42
2000s: 28
2010s (three years): 14
Duwe says that 2012 was certainly a horric year, but it is too early to tell if
it signals an ominous trend. The worst year for public shootings was in 1991,
when eight incidents took place, he said. With seven incidents, 2012 ranks
second, along with 1999 – when the assault ban was in eect. (Duwe says
his research shows that assault weapons are used in a relatively small
number of cases, but they do result in far more wounded victims)
We ran this data past a spokesman for Clinton, but he declined to comment
or oer an explanation for where the former president got his facts. That
always makes us suspicious.
Still, as our colleague Brad Plumer has noted, a dierent denition of mass
shooting might yield a dierent picture. Mother Jones magazine tabulated
its own data over the past three decades and came up with these gures:
Shootings before, during and after assault ban
1982-1994: 19
1995-2004: 16
2005-2012: 27
This gets us a little closer to Clinton’s claim — it suggests that more than 40
percent of mass shootings in the past 30 years have taken place since the
assault weapon ban ended. But that’s still not the same thing as he said –
“half of all of them in the history of the country.”
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Moreover, the reasons behind a spike or decline in gun violence are often
much more complex than a single factor, such as the expiration of a law. In
general, overall crime rates, including homicides, have declined in recent
years because of a variety of factors.
In the highly charged debate over guns, it is important for politicians on
both sides to get their facts straight. In this case, the available data show
that Clinton was way o base in his assertion, making an exaggerated claim
– which his oce would not even defend.
Given the fuzziness of the data and questions about denitions, we are
going to cut Clinton a bit of slack. But such uncertainty in the data means
politicians need to be very careful in making claims about gun violence.
Just a few notable mass shootings in recent years:
Feb. 14, 2018 — Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida: 17 killed, 15 injured.
Nov. 14, 2017 — Rancho Tehama Elementary School in Rancho Tehama,
California: 5 killed, 10 injured.
Nov. 5, 2017 — First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas: 26 killed, 20
injured.
Oct. 1, 2017 — Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada: 58 killed, 422
injured.
Jan. 6, 2017 — Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida: 5 killed, 6 injured.
Sept. 23, 2016 — Cascades Mall Macy’s in Burlington, Washington: 5 killed.
July 7, 2016 — Police protest march in Dallas, Texas: 5 killed, 9 injured.
June 12, 2016 — Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida: 49 killed, 53 injured.
Feb. 20, 2016 — Cracker Barrel in Kalamazoo, Michigan: 6 killed, 2 injured.
Dec. 2, 2015 — Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California: 14
killed, 21 injured.
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Oct. 1, 2015 — Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon: 9 killed, 7
injured.
July 16, 2015 — Recruiting and Naval Reserve centers in Chattanooga,
Tennessee: 5 killed, 1 injured.
June 17, 2015 — Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston,
South Carolina: 9 killed, 1 injured.
Oct. 24, 2014 — Marysville Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington:
4 killed, 1 injur