Mass Shootings Fuel Fear, Account for Fraction of Murders
By Annie Linskey – Sep 17, 2013 12:02 AM ET
Mass U.S. shootings such as the bloody rampage at the Washington Navy Yard spur safety concerns and garner intense media attention while statistically accounting for few of the total murders reported nationwide.
In the 30 years through March, 78 public mass shootings occurred in the U.S. — incidents in which four or more people were killed at random by a gunman murdering indiscriminately, according to a report issued that month by the Congressional Research Service. These crimes don’t include gang-related killings or domestic disputes where a person slays relatives or other people linked to the murderer.
People hold candles in remembrance of those affected by gun violence during a vigil at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 16, 2013. Photographer: Greg Kahn/Getty Images
The mass slaughters listed in the report caused the deaths of 547 people. Over the same three decades through 2012, that’s less than a tenth of 1 percent of the 559,347 people the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates were murdered in America.
“It is a very, very small percentage,” said James Alan Fox, who teaches criminology at Boston’s Northeastern University and co-authored a book about mass shootings called “Extreme Killing,” published in 2011.
In the wake of shootings such as the one in Washington that claimed at least 13 lives, including the alleged shooter, “our tendancy is to go overboard and overreach in terms of trying to increase levels of security,” Fox said. “The fear is greater than the risk.”
Here’s the problem with that headline: the majority of murders have some kind of victim related motive. Jealous lover, robbery, vendetta, drug deal gone bad (when was the last time you heard of a beer sale gone bad? JUST LEGALIZE IT) etc.
Mass shootings happen outside that explainable universe. They happen seemingly at random: your 6 year old is at school learning how to diagram simple sentences and then she’s lying on a tile floor with her hazed-over eyes open and blood all around. Or your spouse went to work and was gunned down at a halal cart.
Different altogether.