Thread: Study Finds Mass Killings NOT On The Rise Over Past Decade

Study Finds Mass Killings Not On The Rise Over Past Decade
October 18, 2017
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/10/...sity-illinois/

CHICAGO (CBS) — Research by of University of Illinois professor has revealed a surprising trend about mass murder in the United States.

Contrary to what you might think, mass murders are not on the rise, according to computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson.

Jacobson said there were 323 such killings – in which four or more people are killed in one incident – between January 2006 and October 2016. The mass killings appeared to be evenly distributed over that time, meaning their rate remained stable over the past decade, and did not spike during any particular season or year.

"The data doesn't lie. The rate of these events just is not increasing as the perception is given in the media. This is just what it is," he said....



...."Family mass killings are over three times more likely to occur than a public killing. So what we just saw in Las Vegas is actually not the most common type of mass killing,"...

Originally Posted by Quest

Then there is this report that,if accurate takes it back to 2000 and shows a sharp increase....

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html

There was a correction at bottom of that article...

Correction: October 16, 2014

An article on Sept. 25 about a Federal Bureau of Investigation study on shootings referred incorrectly at several points to the type of shooting incidents the bureau was examining. The study focused on "active shooter" incidents, not "mass shootings." An "active shooter" incident was defined as "a situation in which a shooting is in progress and an aspect of the crime may affect the protocols used in responding to and reacting at the scene of the incident." (As the article correctly noted, the report did in fact show an increase in mass shootings, although the study focused on a specific type of shooting situation that law enforcement and the public may face that did not encompass all gun-related situations.)

Originally Posted by Quest

According to this the highest years are the 80's and 90's

http://www.heraldnet.com/news/the-hi...gs-in-the-u-s/

Context....

“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 effectiveness. 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 find....




...We ran this data past a spokesman for Clinton, but he declined to comment or offer an explanation for where the former president got his facts. That always makes us suspicious.

Still, as our colleague Brad Plumer has noted, a different definition of mass shooting might yield a different picture. Mother Jones magazine tabulated its own data over the past three decades and came up with these figures:

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.”

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 off base in his assertion, making an exaggerated claim – which his office would not even defend.

Given the fuzziness of the data and questions about definitions, 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.