With mass shootings (such as the high school massacre in Oxford, Mich.) soaring and mass murders (such as the murder-by-car at the Christmas Parade in Waukesha, Wis.) back in the headlines, a new study by two Northeastern U. criminologists sheds needed light on this often confused set of topics.
In “Mass Murder in America: Trends, Characteristics, Explanations, and Policy Response” in Homicide Studies, James Alan Fox and Jack Levin analyze all 448 mass murders from 2006 to 2020 and dispel some of the stereotypes that have clouded thinking upon these gruesome subjects.
They define a mass murder as an event that kills four or more (not including the assailant if he winds up dead), and by any method. Fox and Levin note:
We also include mass killings involving weapons other than firearms. Not invoking debate over gun control, these cases are relatively obscure.
About 27 percent of mass murders don’t involve guns, while only 16 percent of mass murders are carried out with the rifles that obsess Democrats. Fox and Levin note:
Finally, defying the popular conception about the role of assault weapons, it was handguns and not rifles or shotguns that were most likely to be used as a weapon of mass murder destruction.
For example, the press has been trying to shut down public discussion of the Waukesha onslaught since the suspect is black and he didn’t use a gun, much less an AR-15.
Yet, the association of mass murders and rifles is not wholly misguided. From 2006 to 2020, rifles were used in 29 percent of Columbine-like public mass murders, the ones where the murderers attempt to kill fairly random victims. And they tend to be deadlier.
Still, mass murders with rifles make up less than one half of one percent of all murders.
Fox and Levin divide mass murders into three main types. Domestic mass murders account for a plurality of murder victims, followed by public killings (such as notorious school and post office shootings), and then felony-related mass murders involving gangs, home invasions, funerals shootings, and the like.
In contrast, a mass shooting is usually defined as a gunfire incident with four or more people wounded and/or killed.
Thus, the recent school shooting was both a mass murder (four dead) and a mass shooting (eleven struck), while the Waukesha attack was a mass murder (six dead and 62 hurt) but not a mass shooting.
Got that?
Keep in mind that luck plays a role in whether mass shootings turn into mass murders: If somebody opens fire on the guy who dissed him in a crowded club, whether four people die or not depends largely upon chance. These days, emergency medical responders are so skillful that most mass shooting victims are saved, no thanks to the shooter, although some will be crippled for life.
Mass shootings are much more common than mass murders (two dozen times more so in 2021), but individual mass murders get far more publicity, especially if the shooter is white and uses a long gun.
