A Guide to Mass Shootings in America - Mother Jones
(this is a few months old, but I don't think it's been posted here yet)
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A Guide to Mass Shootings in America[/font]
There have been at least 62 in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.
It is perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado last July, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August, another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis in September—and then the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school in December—are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass shootings* across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Twenty-five of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006, and seven of them took place in 2012. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.
Weapons: Of the 143 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and semiautomatic handguns with high-capacity magazines. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to slaughter students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes, along with an AR-15 assault rifle, when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater. In Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza wielded a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle as he massacred 20 school children and six adults.
The killers: More than half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (12 and 20, respectively); the other 30 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, and religious and government buildings. Forty four of the killers were white males. Only one of them was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) The average age of the killers was 35, though the youngest among them was a mere 11 years old. (See Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998.) A majority were mentally troubled—and many displayed signs of it before setting out to kill. Explore the map for further details—we do not consider it to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used we believe that we've produced the most comprehensive rundown available on this particular type of violence. (Mass shootings represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers, jump to
page 2. For the stories of the 151 shooting rampage victims of 2012,
click here, and for all of MoJo's year-long investigation into gun laws and mass shootings,
click here.
MUCH MORE