Summary
A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder finds that 7% of U.S. adults have witnessed a mass shooting, and over 2% have been injured in one.
Researchers define mass shootings as incidents where four or more people are shot in public spaces. With nearly 5,000 such events since 2014, experts stress the need for public health strategies to address the psychological and physical impacts.
The study highlights how mass shootings are not isolated events but a widespread issue affecting millions of Americans.
With 500 mass shootings/year, that’s a whole lot of mass casualty events happening every day here that we just dont hear about, I guess? Even if these are drivebys, thats a whole lot of people standing around in the street where it happens. Idk, without digging into the methodology of the study this seems pretty suspect.
They’re also counting people who can hear it, so that’s a few blocks worth of people indoors and out.
And if they’re counting gang violence incidents, those are usually in more populated areas, so that would mean any one instance automatically affects more people.
But I think if, without any other prompting, you asked someone who was near a drive-by shooting, whether they were in a mass shooting, they would say no. Gang violence and school shootings are both gun violence, but they’re not really in the same category because they have different causes and motivations.