For the last week or so, the news media, entertainment media and internet have been loaded down with claims that America has had more mass shootings in 2015 than 2015 has had days. This, of course, sounds pretty bad, and is a factoid being used by the civilian disarmament movement to further their cause of restricting firearms solely to agents of the government and violent criminals. But is the claim accurate?
Surprise, surprise, it’s not.
The Media’s Inflated ‘Mass Shootings’ Count Is Wildly Misleading
Basically, the definition of “mass shooting” had to be badly mangled in order to get the numbers they were after. The definition being used here is that in a single incident of gunfire, four or more people are injured or killed. Note, though, that it’s not four people injured by the shooter shooting them. Nor four people being injured by being shot. or, indeed, *anybody* being shot. Injuries such as bystanders running away, tripping and skinning their knee? They’re counted. The shooter himself gets shot by a cop, or beat half to death by a bystander, or shoots himself? He’s counted.
The number being trotted out is 355 mass shootings in 2015. The Congressional Research Service defines:
“mass public shooting” is a mass shooting “in at least one or more public locations, such as a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting . . . and not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle).” Using these definitions, Grant Duwe, in his 2007 book Mass Murder in the United States: A History, notes: “Excluding those that occurred in connection with criminal activity such as robbery, drug dealing, and organized crime, there were 116 mass public shootings during the twentieth century” (emphasis mine). The Congressional Research Service reported 317 mass shootings between 1999 and 2013, only 66 of which qualified under their criteria as mass public shootings.
According to this metric, there were fewer mass shootings in *14* *years* than is now being claimed for 2015.
However you count ’em, a mass public shooting is a Very Bad Thing. But some in the civilian disarmament movement are claiming that the US is somehow unique in this, that we are virtually alone in having mass shootings. But, surprise, surprise, this isn’t accurate either.
Comparing Death Rates from Mass Public Shootings and Mass Public Violence in the US and Europe
How dangerous is the US as far as mass shootings? Not very, compared to some Enlightened European Nations:
