Violence and crime in General has been falling since '93, although no one knows why. Has the rate of mass shootings, particularly the lone nut, random type, versus things like domestic violence and gang shootouts been increasing?
Thx,
Rob
From Sept 2014: mass shootings have increased:
That downward trend from 1993 doesn’t hold up in some cities, however, in which you would be lucky to survive there if you got lost at night.
We also have some issues with how crimes are labeled, reported, or not reported.
Yes, the so-called Golden Age of decreasing rates of crime are a thing of the past.
The definition of “mass shooting” has changed, due to a campaign by redditors over the past couple of years. By the old (federal) definition, we’re in the single digits or low double digits each year. By the new definition, we’re at more than one a day.
It’s a question of definition. That NYT article has an addendum clarifying that the FBI statistics it discusses actually refer to “active shooter” events, rather than “mass shootings.” Mother Jones applied a somewhat restrictive definition of mass shooting and found that there had been 62 in the period 1982-2012, or just over two per year. I am not sure what their current numbers are; I saw one reference to their figures now being 73 through 2015. That works out to about 2.2 per year, which would be an uptick. Whether it is statistically significant, I cannot say.
I wish I could have found the article I read last week that details the differences between these definitions. “Active shooter” is one thing, “mass shooting” is another, and then the Reddit definition (which every media outlet seems to be currently embracing) is yet another. It matters very much which definition you choose. By some definitions, they’re going up, by others, they are not, and others still are ambiguous. I seem to recall that by the FBI’s definition of mass shooting, when excluding domestic violence or gang activity, the numbers are decreasing.
Here a good summary of how different definitions of the term “mass shootings” can lead to very different conclusions:
According to fivethirtyeight, the rate of shootings has increased. Quoting Mother Jones, they say:
Mother Jones magazine gathered data on mass shootings for a 2012 investigation and has continued to update its list, counting 72 incidents from 1982 through Tuesday. The magazine uses relatively strict criteria — the incidents must occur in public places and can’t involve gangs or robbery. The primary motive must be mass murder. Also, Mother Jones excludes incidents in which the shooter killed three people or fewer — meaning that its count doesn’t include the shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic last week that killed three people. Events that fit the criteria are rare — the high in a single year was seven, in 2012. That means single large events have a big impact on the data, making it noisy. But the long-term trend is clear: There have been more total mass shooting incidents and deaths in the 11 years starting with 2005 than there were in the previous 23 years combined.
My take is that statistics and their reporting can be made to show anything. Just the fact that the question has been asked (by the OP) means the answer is in the affirmative. YMMV.