By Sarah Watson

Mass shootings are one example of a focusing event that has particular significance for firearms legislation. Mass shootings shock, disturb and provoke enormous and controversial debate, often causing significant public and media resonance, becoming the subject of intense discussion politically. At times providing an impetus for legislative amendments, often in distinct ways that routine gun violence does not. If certain events highlight the need for reform, policy change becomes more likely. Cases with the lowest number of victims are likely to generate the least amount of attention and are most likely to be missed in data collection, rendering them the least noteworthy, least important in terms of lethality and social and political consequence. Various problems come to the attention of people in and around government, necessitating an understanding of why such problems occupy officials’ attention and appear to be more ‘deserving’ of attention.

Criminology & Criminal JusticeOnlineFirst, July 19, 2022

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  Volume 4 addresses several issues set out in the Commission’s mandate, including the direction to inquire into “the steps taken to inform, support and engage victims, families, and affected citizens.” We also develop additional main findings as well as lessons learned and recommendations pertaining to the direction to examine these issues set out in the Orders in Council: (ii) access to firearms (v) communications with the public during and after the event, including the appropriate use of the public alerting system established under the Alert Ready program (ix) policies with respect to the disposal of police vehicles and any associated equipment, kit, and clothing (xi) information and support provided to the families of victims, affected citizens, police personnel, and the community. Volume 4, Community, focuses on the role of communities and their members in responding to critical incidents and in contributing to community safety and wellbeing. We open our report by recognizing the extensive harm resulting from the April 2020 mass casualty, one that centres on the lives taken, the survivors, and their families; and ripples out to affected communities, emergency responders, and outward through a circular pattern of impact. One of our main findings in Volume 2 is that community members played a central role as first responders during the mass casualty. We also find the harms caused by the perpetrator’s violence did not begin on April 18. in Volume 3 we bring together these two findings and underscore the ways in which community members are also first preventers, in the sense of fostering the safety of women and others affected by gender-based violence. This volume elaborates this understanding of the dual community role. Communities and their members are both affected by critical incident responses and by systems for ensuring everyday safety, and they have an active role in responding to  incidents and in contributing to community safety and well-being on an ongoing basis. Perhaps more fundamentally, the structure of our Report recognizes that we need to rebalance the relationship between communities and police in ensuring public safety. To put it simply, communities come first.     

 Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 734p.

By Rosanna Smart, Terry L. Schell

There is no standard definition of what constitutes a mass shooting, and different data sources—such as media outlets, academic researchers, and law enforcement agencies—frequently use different definitions when discussing and analyzing mass shootings. For instance, when various organizations measure and report on mass shootings, the criteria they use in counting such events might differ by the minimum threshold for the number of victims, whether the victim count includes those who were not fatally injured, where the shooting occurred, whether the shooting occurred in connection to another crime, and the relationship between the shooter and the victims. These inconsistencies lead to different assessments of how frequently mass shootings occur and whether they are more common now than they were a decade or two ago. Data show that, regardless of how one defines mass shootings, perpetrators are likely to be men. But several other characteristics that are statistically predictive of perpetration are still uncommon among offenders on an absolute level. The rare nature of mass shootings creates challenges for accurately identifying salient predictors of risk and limits statistical power for detecting which policies may be effective in reducing mass shooting incidence or lethality. Implementing broader violence prevention strategies rather than focusing specifically on the most-extreme forms of such violence may be effective at reducing the occurrence and lethality of mass shootings.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2021. 32p.

Jillian J. Turanovic, Travis C. Pratt, Kristen Neville, and Antonia La Tosa

“…mass shootings encompass all incidents with four or more gunshot fatalities, not including the shooter, within 24 hours. Existing publicly available databases on deadly mass shootings often focus only on those that occur in public spaces (and that are neither family- nor felony-related). We include public mass shooting incidents, but we also assess all the other deadly mass shootings that occurred over this period (e.g., those that happened in private spaces among family members, and those that occurred in public spaces but were part of another criminal event). Our effort to be more inclusive allows for the examination of not only the characteristics of deadly mass shootings that occur in public, but to also examine how similar (or not) these incidents are to deadly mass shootings that take place in other contexts. In all, our database contains information on 720 incidents that occurred in both public and private spaces between 1980 and 2018. Consistent with prior research, we used open-source data (e.g., media reports, official police and court records) to code each deadly mass shooting incident according to a host of characteristics.

Tallahassee: College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University , 2022. 53p.

By Nils Duquet

Every year in Europe around 1,150 people are shot dead with firearms. These deaths occur in various contexts, including the relational and criminal spheres. The little available research into the weapons used during these fatal crimes suggests that different types of firearms are used in different contexts.1 In this report we focus on the weapons that were used for one specific form of deadly firearms incidents, namely “public mass shootings”. These are shooting incidents in the (semi-)public space in which the perpetrator(s) use one or more firearms and during which several people are killed and injured. Under this umbrella term we find numerous types of shooting incidents, ranging from school shootings in which a frustrated pupil murders a number of classmates and/or teachers to terrorist attacks in which groups of perpetrators attempt to spread terror in coordinated attacks. A look at recent mass shootings shows that significant differences can be observed in terms of, for example, the locations where these shootings were carried out, the number of perpetrators, the motives of the perpetrator(s), the selection of the victims and the firearms used. This report analyses one specific aspect of such shooting incidents, namely the firearms that were used.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2016. 45p.

By The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission

For this Initial Report, the Commission emphasized two major priorities—what happened leading up to the shooting and the law enforcement response. Knowing the true and accurate facts about all the contributing variables leading up to the massacre of February 14 was critical for forming a body of knowledge about certain topics (for example active shooter policies) and enabled the Commission to have a baseline from which to make informed and deliberative recommendations. Further, this knowledge allowed the Commission to make findings that are necessary to drive change. The Commission’s effort is far from complete; all areas require further investigation and recommendations, which the Commission will continue to work on in 2019. This Initial Report establishes the facts and timeline of “what” occurred on February 14, 2018. The more complicated question of “how” it happened and how it became one of the largest school mass killing events in United States’ history is more difficult because of many varied contributing causes. The causes include Cruz’s mental and behavioral health issues, people not reporting warning signs or reporting signs that were not acted on by those to whom actionable information was reported, and how Cruz’s behavioral and discipline issues were addressed (or not addressed) by Broward County Public Schools. Also contributing, was the overall lack of adequate or effective physical site security and unenforced or non-existent security measures and policies at MSDHS, as well as the ineffective behavioral threat assessment process at MSDHS.

Tallahassee, FL: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission 458p.

By The Investigative Committee

This is the interim report of the Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting of the Texas House of Representatives. Conscious of the desire of the Uvalde community and the public at large to receive an accurate account of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School, the Committee has worked diligently and with care to issue this interim report of its factual findings. The Committee’s work is not complete. We do not have access to all material witnesses. Medical examiners have not yet issued any reports about their findings, and multiple other investigations remain ongoing. The Committee believes this interim report constitutes the most complete telling to date of the events of and leading to the May 24, 2022, tragedy. This Committee has prioritized factual accuracy, as will be evident from our attention to conducting our own interviews and documenting our sources of information. Still, based on the experiences of past mass-shooting events, we understand some aspects of these interim findings may be disputed or disproven in the future. The Committee issues this interim report now, believing the victims, their families, and the entire Uvalde community have already waited too long for answers and transparency.

Austin, TX: Texas House of Representatives, 2022. 82p.

By The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission

On December 14, 2012, one of the most vicious and incomprehensible domestic attacks in American history occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Within a few hours, the world understood the gravity of the attack. Lives were lost in two distinct locations: Sandy Hook Elementary School and a private residence in Newtown. The scope of the tragedy would take on international proportions, and people from around the world would grieve and mourn alongside the families of Newtown.

Hartford, CT: Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, 2015) 277p.

By Jason R. Silva and Emily A. Greene-Colozzi

This research brief will explore what we know about foiled and failed mass school shootings—referring to incidents and plots that resulted in zero victim casualties. Findings will illustrate the common mass school shooting perpetrator and incident characteristics, as well as what contributed to these attacks being thwarted. Actionable takeaways based on the research will illustrate future strategies for prevention and intervention including leakage and warning signs, as well as situational crime prevention.

Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, 2022. 24p.

By William Krouse and Daniel J. Richardson

In the wake of tragedy in Newtown CT, Congress defined “mass killings” as “3 or more killings in a single incident” (P.L. 112-265). Any consideration of new or existing gun laws that follows mass shootings is likely to generate requests for comprehensive data on the prevalence and deadliness of these incidents. Despite the pathos of mass shootings, only a handful of researchers and journalists have analyzed the principal source of homicide data in the United States—the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—to determine whether those incidents have become more prevalent and deadly. According to the FBI, the term “mass murder” has been defined generally as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered, within one event, and in one or more locations in close geographical proximity. Based on this definition, for the purposes of this report, “mass shooting” is defined as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity. Similarly, a “mass public shooting” is defined to mean a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, in at least one or more public locations, such as, a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting. This report analyzes mass shootings for a 15-year period (1999-2013). CRS analysis of the FBI SHR dataset and other research indicates that offenders committed at least 317 mass shootings, murdered 1,554 victims, and nonfatally wounded another 441 victims entirely with firearms during that 15-year period. The prevalence of mass shooting incidents and victim counts fluctuated sporadically from year to year. For the period 2007-2013, the annual averages for both incidents and victim counts were slightly higher than the years from 1999-2007.

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015. 51p.

By Steffen Hurka.

Politicization and Policy Change in Western Europe. While the causes of rampage violence have been analysed thoroughly in diverse academic disciplines, we hardly know anything about the factors that affect their consequences for public policy. This book addresses rampage shootings in Western Europe and their conditional impact on politicization and policy change in the area of gun control. The author sets out to unravel the factors that facilitate or impede the access of gun control to the political agenda in the wake of rampage shootings and analyses why some political debates lead to profound shifts of the policy status quo, while others peter out without any legislative reactions. In so doing, the book not only contributes to the theoretical literature on crisis-induced policy making, but also provides a wealth of case-study evidence on rampage shootings as empirical phenomena.

London; New York: Routledge, 2017. 201p.