curl-6 said:
Well, using the definition of 3 or more people shot (not including the perpetrator) in one incident, excluding organized crime, there's been 248 so far this year. (So in the last 220 days) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019 You may not call that epidemic, as that's a descriptive and hence subjective term, but it certainly strikes me as an accurate description. Granted, I'm not American, but if this was happening to my country I would consider it an extremely severe problem. |
I am American, and my level of concern, on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being not at all concerned), is probably about a 2. And, my level of concern is elevated not because I think we have a mass shooting problem, but because I see a risk of overreaction based on media hype. This thread really is evidence of the damage that media hype does. There truly just isn't a significant problem. Literally nobody in the US is scared of getting shot in a random-ish violence incident, but there are a bunch of people here with wild and crazy thoughts about gun violence in the US based purely on the outrageous stuff they've heard on the news and in Facebook posts.
In any case, the statistic that you used is being thrown around a lot. I obviously haven't studied every case. But, as near as I can tell, they left out Italian Mafia-like organized crime, but included the less sophisticated corner street gang crime. My sense is that there have been about 5 events, maybe 7 or 8, that actually fit the definition that people have in their heads when they think of "mass shooting".
