#6 – Mass Shooting, an American Phenomenon*

Summary in seconds: mass shooting: recent tragic stories, a massive problem without clear definition, is it just an American phenomenon?

Recent Tragic Stories

“It was a quiet, peaceful, lovely morning, and people were enjoying the parade,” Adrienne Drell¹, a retired Journalist and a resident of Highland Park, Chicago, recalled the moments that preceded the last 4^th of July mass shooting in this affluent suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

The widespread media coverage of this sad event kept it in the periphery of America’s attention for a few days. Like countless similar stories that preceded the 4^th of July tragedy, its news dimmed out of the American media within days, and soon after that, it faded from our memory as if it never happened.

A few days earlier, on May 24, the same tragic scenario was playing out in Uvalde, Texas². Unlike the Chicago victims, who were white upper-middle-class suburbanites of all ages, this time they were young grade school, brown children, with a couple of their teachers from a working-class small rural town. And less than two weeks earlier, on May 14, a similar script³ was performed in a small supermarket theater in a working-class, relatively poor inner-city neighborhood, and the sufferers this time were all blacks.

The sad and frustrating part about these mass shootings is that within a few days, after each one of these mad incidents, life goes on as if nobody really cares.

A Massive Problem Without Clear Definition

A straightforward definition of “mass shooting” can be as simple as “incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence⁴.” However, this definition is not precise enough to ease the dilemma of researchers investigating the problem or policymakers who are trying to prevent future tragedies. Unfortunately, there is no broadly accepted definition because the inclusion criteria for a more precise definition are disputed. One definition that is mostly used to describe the problem is “an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims⁴.”

Mass Shooting – is it an American Phenomenon?

The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country⁵. According to the previous definition, almost one-third of the world’s public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States⁵.And the problem is not dwindling down. According to a study published in 2014⁶, ^“the rate at which mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011.” The same study mentioned that between 1982 and 2011, mass shootings occurred roughly once every 200 days, and between 2011 and 2013, the rate accelerated to one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in the United States.

What We Do Know and What We Do Not About Mass Shootings

Stories about mass shootings seem to be a frequent and unwelcome guest on our TV stations. However, these stories always talk about missed red flags that might have averted the violent acts, the swift reaction of brave police officers responding to their call of duty, followed by days of parading the stories of victims’ lives that were cut short. However, we never seem to get any satisfying answers as to why our government is unable to correct this American phenomenon that plagues our society like a curse.

We are familiar with a common theme of potential contributing factors to this problem, like high access to guns, mental health, and suicidality.

Higher Accessibility and Ownership of Guns

The US has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world, with 120.5 firearms per 100 people⁷. Several studies have linked higher accessibility and ownership of guns to the high rate of mass shootings in the U.S ^{5 & 7}.

Mental Health and Suicidality

The link between mental illness and mass shootings is controversial at best. However, it is a topic that attracts a lot of politicians and defenders of “law-abiding citizens’ rights to carry weapons without restrictions.” In a recent study⁸, a group of mental health and law enforcement experts reported that almost one-third of incidents of mass violence, since the 1990s were committed by people with “serious mental illness” (SMI). Surprisingly, the same study emphasized that people with SMI are responsible for less than 4% of all the violent acts committed in the United States.

How can we face tragic epidemics like mass shootings without a clear definition of the problem? how can we overcome this social ailment while federal funding of gun violence research is on hold⁹? And how can we hold gun manufactures accountable for allowing weapons of war on the streets of our cities, while they are under federal law protection¹⁰?

Let us just accept mass shootings as if they were another natural disaster or an act of God. Just report it when it happens, offer your thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, and continue living your life like nothing happened.

References

1. Horror on the Fourth: Suspect in custody after 6 killed, dozens wounded at Highland Park Fourth of July parade.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/7/4/23194354/highland-park-fourth-july-parade-gunfire

2. What to Know About the School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

3. 2022 Buffalo Shooting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Buffalo_shooting

4. Mass Shooting in the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

5. Why the US has the most mass shootings?

https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/health/u-s-most-mass-shootings/index.html

6. Shootings Has Tripled Since 2011, Harvard Research Shows