Mass shootings

Introduction

Mass shootings are difficult to quantify because no federal definition exists. Differences in the definition of mass shootings create difficulty in understanding the burden of and prevention approaches for these incidents. For example, the number of incidents included in four major databases that tracked mass shootings ranged from 11 to 346 incidents, with only two incidents included in all four (Booty et al., 2019).

This resource bank will be using the same definition of mass shooting (four or more people shot, not including the shooter) used by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). GVA is an independent, non-profit, non-advocacy corporation that collects timely data from over 7,500 sources.

Mass shootings in the U.S. account for 73% of all mass shootings in the world (Silva, 2022). From 2014-2022, 21,006 people were injured or killed in mass shootings in the U.S. (Barnard et al., 2023). The majority of mass shootings are not committed in a public place and involve community violence or intimate partner violence (Barnard et al., 2023). Further, youth are more likely to be injured or killed by a firearm at home than in a mass shooting at school or a public place (EFSGV, 2020).

The scope of the problem in Colorado

Colorado has experienced 61 mass shootings in the last 10 years with 328 people shot, resulting in 82 killed and 246 injured (Zeoli et al, 2022). Mass shootings in Colorado with the highest numbers of injuries and deaths include:

Regardless of the setting or scale, all mass shootings impact the communities within which they occur and have long-lasting physical, mental, and emotional consequences

Prevention approaches

Creating a standardized federal definition of mass shootings would enable additional and higher-quality data to be collected to inform prevention efforts.

Extreme Risk Protection Orders can help a family, community member, or law enforcement intervene when an individual displays distressing behavior (Zeoli et al., 2022). 

Mass shootings are often made more fatal depending on the type of firearm used. Assault weapons and large-capacity magazines allow perpetrators to injure or kill a large number of people in a short amount of time. Laws and policies that ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines may reduce mass shootings (Gius, 2014). 

Additionally, there are several factors to consider when reporting and discussing mass shootings. When news is reported responsibly, it can reduce the risk of others imitating harmful behaviors, decrease stigmatization of mental illness, and avoid causing further emotional distress to survivors and their communities. Following the Aurora movie theatre mass shooting, the parents of one of the victims created the No Notoriety movement, which encourages focusing on the victims and the event rather than the perpetrator.
 

References

1. Barnard, L. M., Wright-Kelly, E., Brooks-Russell, A., & Betz, M. E. (2023). Characterization of mass shootings by state, 2014-2022. JAMA Network Open, 6(7), e2325868-e2325868. 
2. Gius, M., 2015. The impact of state and federal assault weapons bans on public mass shootings. Applied Economics Letters, 22(4), pp.281-284.
3. NIJ (National Institute of Justice). 2023. Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories. Accessed March 23, 2023.
4. Pew Research Center. 2023. What the Data Says About Gun Deaths in the U.S. Pew Research Center. Accessed March 23, 2023.
5. Zeoli, A.M., Frattaroli, S., Barnard, L., Bowen, A., Christy, A., Easter, M., Kapoor, R., Knoepke, C., Ma, W., Molocznik, A. and Norko, M. 2022. Extreme risk protection orders in response to threats of multiple victim/mass shooting in six US states: A descriptive study. Preventive medicine, 165: 107304.