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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumA Guide to Mass Shootings In America
A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
There have been at least 60 in the last 30 yearsand most of the killers got their guns legally.
Update, 8/24/12: At least one person was killed and eight others wounded in a shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York City on Friday morning. The 60 mass shootings we've documented below involve at least four deaths in each case (see our criteria below, with additional explanation here) but represent only a small fraction of America's gun violence.
It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20 and another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5 are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 60 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.
Weapons: Of the 137 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and semiautomatic handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to massacre students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater.
The killers: Just under half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (11 and 18, respectively); the other 31 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases. The average age of the killers was 35. Only one of them was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) Forty two of them were white males. The youngest killer was a mere 11 years old. (See Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998.) Explore the map for further detailswe do not consider the map to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used to identify mass murders, we believe that we've produced one of the most comprehensive rundowns available on this particular type of traumatic violence. (Mass murders represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
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A Guide to Mass Shootings In America (Original Post)
otohara
Aug 2012
OP
onehandle
(51,122 posts)1. Hold on, I'm going to do some quick profiling...
...hmm...
Yep. Legal gun owners are a threat.
bongbong
(5,436 posts)2. Guns!
Guns are safer than teddy bears, according the gun-relgionists in the gungeon.