Story Highlights
- While the perception in the wake of this year’s mass shootings has been that such acts are on the rise, the Associated Press found that it’s actually the exact opposite when you look at the data on a macro level.
- “There is no pattern, there is no increase,” says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston’s Northeastern University.
- He adds that the random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest.
- While mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, says.
- Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.
Jonathon M. Seidl, TheBlaze — [...] Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.
Still, he understands the public perception – and extensive media coverage – when mass shootings occur in places like malls and schools. “There is this feeling that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening.”
[...] Duwe says the cycle has gone on for generations. » Read More
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About the Author
Jonathon M. Seidl is the front page editor of The Blaze. He joined the website as an assistant editor in 2010 as one of its original hires. His writing has appeared in WORLD magazine and online with The American Spectator. Although a Green Bay Packers fanatic, he and his wife live in Dallas, TX, with their dog, Gus. Seidl graduated from The King's College-New York City with a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics.