AP: Mass Shootings Not Growing In Frequency

“Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”

-Washington Post’s WONKBLOG post title, December 14, 2012

With all the talk going on of gun bans and gun “control” in the wake of those horrific school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, I didn’t expect to come across the following. From an Associated Press piece that appeared on the New York Daily News website this past weekend:

Those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

“There is no pattern, there is no increase,” says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston’s Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

I get it. The AP is saying total mass shootings (targeted plus random) aren’t becoming more common. Despite popular perception.

Continuing on:

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

I don’t know about you, but something tells me you won’t be seeing/hearing much of the above in the mainstream media anytime soon.

Source:

“Mass shootings are not growing in frequency, experts say.” Associated Press. 15 Dec. 2012. (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/rise-mass-killings-impact-huge-article-1.1221062). 18 Dec. 2012.