Following four California mass shootings in the span of eight days that left 25 people dead and 17 injured, some gun violence researchers said they’re concerned that a phenomenon known as “mass shooting contagion” is occurring across the state.
The cluster of deadly incidents is not surprising, gun violence researchers told ABC News, saying studies have shown the probability is high that a mass shooting garnering national attention will be rapidly followed by another.
“‘Contagion’ is a statistical process. It’s when the likelihood of a similar crime of another mass shooting increases in the aftermath of another mass shooting. That’s what ‘contagion’ is,” James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, who led a study on the subject published in 2020, told ABC News.
