Exploring and discussing gun violence and mass shootings is a tumultuous topic within the U.S. and often difficult to approach. For some, this debate causes a high level of emotion, anger, and frustration. There are many viewpoints on the topic ranging from the U.S. Supreme Court justice that wants to see the repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. President stating the second amendment will never be repealed in response to Parkland Shooting and the survivors’ March for Our Lives campaign, which is decidedly against repealing the second amendment. There are no shortages of opinions on the matter. However, I will not try to present my own viewpoint within those post – so as to not charge the conversation with any unintended political motives. However, I will state that I support research and informed and dutiful investigation. To this end, I am going to present some data on mass shootings from 1966 through to 2018.

So let’s reduce the topic of shootings to mass shootings. This will allow some focus on the topic, and to remain short. Mass shootings do not have a legal definition within the U.S.. Instead, various government bodies have implemented their own definition such as the FBI considering a mass shooting consisting of those incidents with three or more individuals killed (page 7), and the Congressional Research Service considering a mass shooting as four or more deaths, not including the shooter. However, the CRS addition of a ‘public place’ is used to define a ‘public mass shooting’, while this research is not limited to only ‘public’ places. Research from the CDC into gun violence has largely been halted due to the Dickey Amendment and no definition has of mass shootings have been put forward by that organisation. Recently though, the amendment received clarification to allow the CDC to research gun violence, which will be expected in the future.

With government resources limited on gun violence and mass shootings, open source needed to be utilised in order to quantify mass shooting information. There are a few databases that exist containing information on mass shootings. The most complete and current data comes from the website Mass Shooting Tracker which contains an open source database that allows for researchers to explore the data. This data is compiled and updated daily by volunteers and requires source material to corroborate events. This dataset contains 2,009 events ranging from January 1, 2013 to March 24, 2018, from the time of data collection. This data differs from the definitions presented by the FBI and Congressional Research Service in that records include shootings where four or more individuals have been shot, rather than only those incidents that include at least 3, or 4, deaths. The total number of incidents that meet the FBI criteria of 3 or more deaths is 362. Another database is the Stanford Mass Shootings in America dataset, courtesy of the Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries. This database contains data from 1966 to 2012, although not as often or updated as the Mass Shootings Tracker database. This dataset contains 138 events, while 92 of these meet the requirements of the FBI definition. Within both datasets, at least two source materials corroborating the event are required for inclusion.

Before continuing it is important to note that the data collected was not equally collected, but is representative of the available open source data. The Stanford archive did not include gang related, drug related, or organised crime. The Mass Shooting Tracker did not contain these restrictions. The MST also is updated by a team of volunteers as opposed to the project from Stanford. While these differences do exist, together, a longitudinal picture can be formed, but further investigation will be required to fill in the missing gaps. This also does not necessarily mean that prior to 2013 mass shootings did not exist at the level they do after 2013, but that the research was not targeting the same specifics. Please be cautious in both this, and other interpretations of mass shooting data. You may find the data for the MST located here and for Stanford here and interpret them for yourself.

Due to the disparity in which the data was collected, let’s break down the information a bit. Within the range of 2013-2018, there were 334.83 incidents per year, with the lowest level being recorded in 2014 with 325 events, and the highest level in 2016 with 477 events. When only considering incidents that meet the FBI criteria, we find that there are 60 incidents per year, with the lowest being in 2014 with 55, and the highest in 2017 with 78. Within the range of 1966 – 2012, there were 3.8 with only 36 of 46 years containing any incident information. When considering the FBI definition, there were only 2.7 incidents per year between 1966 – 2012. The highest amount of incidents in a single year was 2012 with 13 incidents in total, and 12 qualifiying for the FBI definition.

Continuing with a chronological order, let’s take a look at the entire dataset. The graph below shows each incident, along with how many were killed, wounded, the location of the incident, and the sources of information that corroborate the information. Additionally, two lines are presented that count the cumulative deaths per incident. In the blue line, we see the total number of cumulative deaths in all incidents (3,359). The brown line shows the cumulative deaths per incident if the FBI definition is utilised of 3 or more deaths in the incident (2,261).

Across all incidents, there were 1.6 deaths per incident. When considering only the FBI definition, this logically increased to 5 deaths per incident. Of course, a mass shooting does not always result in deaths, nor do all casualties result in death. The dataset contains a measurement of wounded individuals, and provides another perspective on mass shootings. In total, there were 8,526 wounded within the dataset with an average of 4 wounded per incident, with 7,018 of those from events meeting the FBI’s definition of mass shooting, averaging 3.3 wounded per incident. This would result in a total of 11,885 casualties from mass shootings from 1966 – 2018, with 9,279 of those events qualifying for the FBI’s definition of a mass shooting.

Putting this into state locations across the US, we find incidents occuring in 49 of the 50 states within all incidents. Only New Hampshire has 0 reported incidents. The least number of incidents occured in Hawaii and North Dakota with 1 incident each, while the most was found in California with 246 incidents. When considering the FBI definition of mass shooting, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Wyoming each of 0 events. The least recorded events were in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont with 1 in each. The most number of events were in California with 50 events. The data for each state can be seen below and contains number of deaths and wounded in total and FBI counts.

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For a more numerical exploration, the data table below shows the combined casualties, deaths, and wounded by both the total counts and FBI definition of a mass shooting incident by state.

In the end, we need more research on this public health topic. We can, however, start to assert that the definition utilised by the Congressional Research Service and FBI may not be adequate regarding mass shootings. These definitions, reliant on body count, negate a number of events that are still important to consider. After all, just because someone did not lose their life does not mean that the shooting has not adversely affected their life. More information on each shooting should be considered and collected such as demographics on the shooter and victims along with any long term consequences within victims and shooters. While the Stanford database does collect a portion of this information, the MST does not creating inequalities in the research. However, the Stanford database is not as full as the MST, indicating that perhaps more information may be out there on previous mass shootings that have not been acknowledged. Alternatively, there could be a very real spike in mass shootings starting in 2013 – but this is currently unknowable.

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