ABSTRACT
Given this definition, many cases of multiple murders occur in the United States that would not be considered public mass shootings. There are, unfortunately, many examples of high-profile public mass shootings in the United States that fit this definition. It is important to note, however, that there are not as many public mass shootings as one would believe. Much of the data presented here were obtained from the website of Mother Jones, but they were corroborated with information from other sources as well (Follman et al. 2016). According to the Mother Jones website, there were only two mass shootings in 2014; nine people died in those incidents. In the same year, there were 11,961 total murders. Hence, these statistics illustrate the fact that mass shootings, although horrendous and very newsworthy, are also very rare. In addition, they are very random. In the past five years, mass shootings have occurred at schools, colleges, churches, temples, and restaurants. Many times, the shooter had no known motive. Many of the shooters committed suicide at the scene. The one common denominator of almost all of the mass shootings over the past 35 years is that they were, by and large, committed by men.
