Why mass killings

Described as the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the U. On February 14, , seventeen people--including students and adults—were killed in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was a nineteen-year-old former student of the school. Authorities reported that he was armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle and countless magazines. People were killed both inside and outside the school.

The Parkland shooting is among the ten deadliest mass shootings in modern U. In recent years, there have been a variety of mass shootings. On October 1, , a gunman at a Las Vegas hotel fired a barrage of gunfire into a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, resulting in the killing of 59 people and injuring hundreds of others.

He then went into a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL and shot and killed 49 people and injured 53 others. On December 2, , two assailants opened fire at a center for people with disabilities in San Bernadino, California; 14 people were killed and 21 others were wounded. That deadly mass shooting came on the heels of another tragic event on November 27, , in which Robert Lewis Dear embarked upon a deadly shooting spree at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Two people and a police officer were killed and nine others were wounded. On October 1, , a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon left nine students dead and another nine injured. The gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, killed himself after an exchange of gunfire with the police.

Mass shootings often raise a lot of feelings that range from sadness and heartbreak to anger and frustration. They also usually lead to a public conversation about gun laws and what our government can and should do.

In after the mass shooting of twenty young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, President Obama proposed legislation to overhaul gun laws. The proposals included universal background checks, new and expanded assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans and other measures to prevent mass shootings. Several months later, it failed to pass the Senate.

Understanding mass shootings, typically defined as the murder of four or more people, school shootings and other gun-related deaths, is complex. According to a Congressional Research Service in , there had been 78 mass murders carried out with guns during the thirty-year period of Because there is not one standard way to tally the number of mass school shootings, in the period between and , the FBI identified active shooter incidents, where one or more shooters were actively engaged in killing or attempted killing in a confined and populated location.

It used this definition to describe instances like Sandy Hook or the Virginia Tech shooting in Since , the rate of mass shootings has tripled. Defenders of gun rights say that proposed gun regulations violate the Second Amendment. In addition to mass shootings, there are other relevant numbers about gun violence in the states. More than 32, people per year are killed by guns—which translates to approximately 88 gun deaths per day.

Compared to peer nations , including Germany, England and Canada, people are much more likely to die from guns in the U. According to the Pew Research Center's public opinion poll on gun proposals, the percentage of the public who agree that we should:. Department of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury, July Department of Justice, a.

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But that means determining exactly what target hardening entails and what works, both informed by real evidence, not by sales pitches from security firms or fact-free ideological assertions. There are also major challenges in scaling up to the approximately 20, high schools in the United States, the vast majority of which will not experience, and are not in danger of ever experiencing a mass shooting.

High school students are far more likely to die in a fatal, automobile accidents than to be killed in a school mass shooting. For other venues, such as business establishments, shopping centers, outdoor concerts and places of worship, the challenges are greater, with the most difficult setting being private residences.

What could target hardening mean there? There is yet another possibility. Mass shooters need to prepare. They require at least one, and often more than one, semi-automatic firearm and many rounds of ammunition. Some acquire bullet-resistant vests. There also has been a tendency to broadcast motives, intentions, and even exact targets on social media. These indicators often materialize shortly before a mass shooting is undertaken and can, in principle, can be monitored.

Various kinds of surveillance can then be undertaken, assuming that criminal justice agencies i. Each homicide is a tragedy, but deaths from mass shootings should be understood within the broader context of gun violence in the United States. There were homicides in Philadelphia in , the vast majority of which were deaths from firearms. That is over 8 times more deaths than for all of the mass shooting homicides in that year.

Also in , over Philadelphia of children school age or younger were shot while not in school. Most survived, but the number of shootings for that year exceeded the number of mass school shooting victims across the entire country, including those who survived their wounds.

And Philadelphia is not an outlier. William J Krouse and Daniel J. Skip to main content.