“Mass killings, particularly those in which a gunman opens fire in a crowded public space, tend to draw much more attention than daily violence. But these shootings represent a fraction of gun violence overall, said Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University and co-founder of the Violence Project, which studies mass killers.
Defining a mass shooting as four or more people killed, Peterson said, such cases account for fewer than 1 percent of all people killed by firearms. They are “very rare, still, even though they’re increasing,” she said. But, Peterson said, it’s not an accident that they receive so much more attention.
‘Mass shootings, by design, [are] meant to go viral in that sense. That’s the goal of them, is fame, is notoriety,’ she said. And these public mass shootings have a “psychological impact” on people, instilling fear of going to the movies or a grocery store, she said.”
The following article explores the different ways firearms have contributed to deaths in the United States that go beyond just mass shootings.
Author: Mark Berman, Lenny Bernstein, Dan Keating, Andrew Ba Tran and Artur Galocha
Source: The Washington Post