Frequency of high-fatality mass shootings is rising
A shooter at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, early yesterday murdered 12 people, including a sheriff’s deputy responding to the incident. It’s the worst shooting incident in the United States in . . . a bit over a week.
There’s an ongoing debate about whether shooting incidents generally are becoming more frequent. The rate of violent
lists because of the five people shot, only two women died.
This has become the tragic norm in the United States.
But something does seem to have shifted. Yes, the Parkland activists were disappointed that pro-gun rights candidates won statewide in their home state, but around the country candidates who ran unapologetically on a gun control message scored victories.
Instead of shying away from the crime in the United States has dropped significantly since the late 1980s and early 1990s and, despite some political rhetoric, remains near all-time lows. But there’s little question that the frequency of high-fatality mass shootings — for our purposes, incidents in which at least 10 people are killed — has increased.
guns issue for fear of the powerful pull of the National Rifle Association, Democrats put it front and center in their campaigns. Especially in the suburbs — where Democrats saw huge gains.
And yesterday, as news of another mass shooting settled in, Democrat Lucy McBath, a guncontrol advocate who lost her son in a fatal shooting in 2012, sealed her victory in a Georgia House district once held by Newt
Mother Jones magazine has tracked mass shootings since 1982, including any incident in which at least four people were killed. From 1984 to 2004, there was an incident in which at least 10 people were killed about once every four years. Over the past four years, there have been eight. There have been four such incidents this year alone.
Gingrich. McBath, who was inspired to run after Parkland, ran on her personal story.
“It is unfortunately not surprising that on the very same day I officially became a congresswoman-elect, other families in this country are receiving the same exact call that I did six years ago when I learned my son had been murdered,” she said in a statement.
With the dramatic increase in