There is no universal definition of mass violence crimes, mass murders, mass killings or mass shootings... Many different definitions are used by researchers, criminal justice experts, and public policy bodies. Some definitions focus solely on the number of deaths, but others count crimes in which there are few deaths but many injuries. Some definitions focus on the method used to kill and injure and others include crimes committed with any weapon. Some definitions focus on the perceived motive of the perpetrator or who was attacked…
Mass shooting:
- Four or more victims killed by gunfire (in a single incident), used, for example, by the
Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database. This definition has been the standard since the 1980s.
- Four or more victims killed by gunfire in a public setting not involving ongoing criminal activity (such as gang conflict and drug trafficking), used, for example, by
The Violence Project. This is a subset of the [previous] definition, which is often referred to as “public mass shootings”.
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Mother Jones defines a mass shooting as an indiscriminate rampage in a public place, resulting in three or more victims killed by the attacker, excluding the perpetrator, gang violence, armed robbery, and attacks by unidentified perpetrators.
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The U.S. Congress : The term “mass shooting” is defined as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity. Similarly, a “mass public shooting” is defined to mean a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, in at least one or more public locations, such as, a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting.
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Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowdsourced data site cited by
CNN,
MSNBC,
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
The Economist, the
BBC, etc., defines a mass shooting as any incident in which four or more people are shot, whether injured or killed, in a single incident, at the same general time and location, not including the shooter.
- Crime violence research group
Gun Violence Archive, whose research is used by major American media outlets, defines a mass shooting as having a "minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident," differentiating between a mass shooting and mass murder and not counting shooters as victims.
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CBS defines a mass shooting as an event involving the shooting (not necessarily resulting in death) of five or more people (sometimes four) with no cooling-off period.
- A mass shooting is an incident of targeted violence carried out by one or more shooters at one or more public or populated locations. Multiple victims (both injuries and fatalities) are associated with the attack, and both the victims and location(s) are chosen either at random or for their symbolic value. The event occurs within a single 24-hour period, though most attacks typically last only a few minutes. The motivation of the shooting must not correlate with gang violence or targeted militant or terroristic activity :
https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/.
- …
Mass killing:
- Under U.S. federal law, the Attorney General may assist in investigating "mass killings", rather than mass shootings. The term is defined as the murder of four or more people with no cooling-off period, but redefined by
Congress in 2013 as being the murder of three or more people, in a single incident that occur in a public place.
- In "Behind the Bloodshed", a report by
USA Today, a mass killing is defined as any incident in which four or more were killed, including familial killings. This definition is also used by the
Washington Post.
- According to the
Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, signed into law in January 2013, a mass killing is defined as a killing with at least three deaths, excluding the perpetrator, in a single incident.
According to the
FBI, the term “
mass murder” has been defined generally as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered, within one event, and in one or more locations in close geographical proximity. Note: the FBI […] excludes cases in which perpetrators kill family members unless large numbers of the general public are also killed. Likewise, cases in which killings occur as a part of another crime are excluded.
A
mass murder is defined as the killing of three or more people at one time and in one location. [...] There appears to be no reliable source regarding accurate data on the incidence of mass murder. [...] Many of these acts of multicide are unrecorded : .
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/mass-murder-united-states.
The lack of a single definition can lead to alarmism in the news media, with some reports conflating categories of different crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootinghttps://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueries_de_masse_aux_%C3%89tats-Unishttps://nmvvrc.org/learn/about-mass-violence/https://cssh.northeastern.edu/sccj/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2022/10/Preference-for-the-Longstanding-Definition-of-Mass-Shooting-Fox-Fridel-2.pdfSpree killer :
« A
spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders in a short time, often in multiple locations.
The
United States Bureau of Justice Statistics has defined a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders". But some academics consider that a killing spree may last weeks or months.
How to distinguish a spree killer from a mass murderer, or a serial killer, is subject to considerable debate, and the terms are not consistently applied even within the academic literature.
In
Serial Murder, Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes defines spree murder as "the killing of three or more people within a 30-day period" and add that killing sprees are "usually accompanied by the commission of another felony". They cite Charles Starkweather and the Beltway Snipers as examples of spree killers. They define serial murder as "the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period between the killings." Under this definition, Andrew Cunanan would be categorized as a serial killer and not a spree killer… »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spree_killer« The primary distinction between a mass murderer and a spree killer, according to the
FBI, is that the latter strikes in multiple locations, though still in a relatively short time frame. The third type, a serial killer, is distinguished by striking over a longer time frame, in multiple locations, with opportunity for what the FBI report refers to as “cooling-off periods” in between attacks » :
https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2012/08/what-is-a-mass-shooting/.
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