Mass Shootings Rare, Government Study Says

By Justin Stakes

Fairfax, VA -(AmmoLand.com)- A new study by the Congressional Research Service, by far the most thorough and comprehensive of its type to date, confirms that mass shootings continue to be rare in the United States.

While Michael Bloomberg’s TheTrace.org website says that mass shootings happen “more often than they used to,” renown criminologist James Alan Fox, of Northeastern University, whose extensive analysis of mass shootings is discussed at length in the CRS study, says that the study shows “there is no solid trend” in the number of such crimes and “No matter how you cut it, there’s no epidemic.”

The study, “Mass Murder with Firearms: Incidents and Victims, 1999-2013,” defines a “mass shooting” as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, in one or more locations in close proximity.” Because the underlying circumstances of mass shootings vary widely, the study categorizes such crimes as family-related, felony-related (e.g., robberies and gang shootouts), and those taking place in public locations, such as schools, restaurants and houses of worship.

By CRS’ count, 71 …read more

Source:: AmmoLand