Skip to content
Connect
Stories

Do mass shootings inspire more mass shootings? If so, what can be done about that?

People in this story

Reason, April 2021

In the last month, the United States has seen four mass shootings in public places that killed at least four people aside from the perpetrator, including yesterday’s attack at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis. Prior to the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, more than a year had elapsed without such a crime, which is the definition of public mass shootings used by the Congressional Research Service.

That pattern is consistent with data indicating that public mass shootings tend to happen in clusters, suggesting that one such crime makes others more likely. “One happens, and you see another few happen right after that,” Hamline University criminologist Jillian Peterson noted in a 2019 interview with NPR.

A 2015 PLOS One study seemed to confirm that impression. Statistician Sherry Towers and her collaborators looked at 232 “mass killings” (defined as “incidents with four or more people killed”) from 2006 through 2013, based on USA Today‘s database. They also considered 188 school shootings—defined as incidents on campus (including college campuses) during school hours, on school buses, or at school-related events (such as football games) in which at least one person was shot—from 1998 through 2013.

Continue reading at Reason.

More Stories

Picture of Dasani water bottles.

Gov. Healey to sign order banning single-use plastic bottles for state agencies

09.21.2023
Co-founder Andrew Song of solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets holds a weather balloon filled with helium, air and sulfur dioxide at a park in Reno, Nevada, United States on February 12, 2023.

Some Politicians Want to Research Geoengineering as a Climate Solution. Scientists Are Worried

09.18.2023
Plastics and other trash littered a salt marsh in Chelsea in April.

Massachusetts lags on banning plastics

09.25.23
Op-eds