ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to identify trends in news coverage of alleged perpetrators in mass shooting incidents between January 1990 and May 2017 to serve as a point of comparison between coverage before and after the Columbine-related shift in attention to incidents of mass gun violence. As an indication of definitional and associational arguments implying positive or negative valence, the coding scheme categorized external factors linked to the alleged perpetrators actions. Media stories report the deaths of alleged mass shooters without necessarily counting the alleged perpetrator among the enumeration of the dead. The two-pronged process of removing deceased perpetrators from the counts of grieve-able mass shooting tragedies and repeatedly associating the violent acts with isolation or anomalous, unhealthy behaviors offers a better understanding of the argumentative grounds of public and political debates about gun violence in the United States. The media has sharply increased the number of stories it dedicates to covering mass shooting incidents in the United States.
