Today's incident reminded me of a recent study that the NRA was parading around the conservative sites. Where it showed that mass school shootings are not more prevalent today than in the past. The metric they used was 'a school shooting where 4 or more people are killed', which until recently, was the way the FBI measured/classified these events. Now they just measure them by whether there is an active shooter.
So, that incident today in MD wouldn't even register on that study as an incident. Even though a gun was brought into a school and multiple people were wounded/killed. Similar incidents have already happened 4 other times this year alone. They wouldn't be counted either.
Yeah etiolate spammed something similar a few pages ago.
The parameters required to meet the study were 4 or more dead within 24 hours by one shooter in a public location only where no other criminal activity is involved.
So right off the bat you eliminate today’s shooting from the data set. You also eliminate roughly 88% of mass shootings according to his published research, since his parameters only include roughly 12% of the broader category of mass murders. On top of that he doesn’t want to include data that involved a private residence, like the mass murder my girlfriend’s cousin was involved in around Plano, Texas. That researcher didn’t seem nefarious or anything but the methodology was a little head scratching. Under those parameters it showed that there wasn’t a rise in frequency, but again, you are purposefully filling the data set in a way I don’t think most people would agree is the best way to define mass shootings.
Furthermore, let’s drop the American insulation and see how frequent these events are in other developed countries. Because once you do that, well, the picture isn’t looking so good for gun advocates. Furthermore, even taking the assertion at face value, the fact that the frequency of mass shootings may not of increased is itself somewhat alarming. Since murder and gun death rates overall have been declining over the last couple decades. The fact that at best we don’t see a similar drop in the frequency of mass shootings is a bit of a damning thing in and of itself, especially if that is the best the NRA has got.