Mass public killings under 1 % of all murders

Mass public killings create a huge psychic impact but are actually a small percentage of all U.S. mass murders and a miniscule portion of all murders in general, an American criminologist says.

Grant Duwe, who works for the Minnesota State Department of Corrections and is the author of Mass Murder in the United States: A History, has looked at 1,202 mass murders between 1900 and 2009. Of those, 12%, or 142 incidents, were massacres in public such as the Denver shooting early Friday morning and at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Columbine in 1999.

But those kind of mass public shootings accounted for less that one-tenth of 1% of all murders in general, he said.

“This is no consolation to those who have lost loved ones, but it’s important we keep these events in perspective.”

The reason society believes these mass public shootings have become more prevalent is in part because of media coverage, Mr. Duwe said.

“You actually have witnesses in most incidents who survived the attack and can provide compelling first-person accounts of what took place. There is also a greater sense of, ‘this could have happened to me.’ ”

For the purpose of his study, he defined mass murder as four or more individuals killed as part of the same incident in a 24-hour period.

Mass murder includes incidents like mass public shootings but the

Keep these events in perspective

most common types are familicides in which someone will kill his or her family, he added.

He said it had been widely assumed that the 1960s marked the first wave of mass murders. In 1966 Charles Whitman shot to death 16 people and wounded 32 others when he fired from a 27-storey tower on the University of Texas campus. That same year, Richard Speck raped and murdered eight student nurses in Chicago during a single night in their residence.

But Mr. Duwe also found there was a wave of mass murder activity in the 1920s and ’30s.

“The main difference though is that the first mass murder wave were mainly familicides and felony related massacres.”

His study found that mass murders and mass public killings rise and fall with both the overall murder and crime rates.

So when mass murders fell in the 1940 and 1950s, the national crime rate also fell. When they began to rise in earnest again, the crime rate also rose.

From 1900 to 1965 there were 21 mass public killings but from 1966 to 2009 there were almost 120.

He said there is no one reason why mass public shootings take place. The person who commits those acts usually feels wronged, has deep psychological problems and is socially isolated.

Those who blame these events on violent video games and availability of weapons are really missing the mark, he added.

“Violent video games could be a causal factor, but I haven’t seen any valid empirical evidence that would support an association with mass murder or, more narrowly, mass public shootings.”

Meantime, the rate of gun ownership has stayed steady and does not appear to have a huge impact either way, he added.