E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Belmont Club: Mass Killings vs. Mass Shootings
Key bits. Interesting graphs at the link.
[PJMedia] What the current debate really seems to be about is whether rapid-fire guns increase the frequency of a special kind of crime called mass shootings. However, this is a somewhat artificial category. Mass shootings are a subset of the larger phenomenon of mass killings, sometimes referred to as rampage killings. "A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons at least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period."

It is one killer, one place, one time, many victims in a setting outside of war. The data collected on this type of even notes the type of weapon used, which is not always a firearm. It is mass killings that one would want to reduce, not just mass shootings.

What differentiates rampage killings from regular homicide is they were (and still are) by comparison extremely rare. Wikipedia lists only 1,850 incidents worldwide in recorded history, which is very small compared to the number of ordinary homicides. While the record probably leaves out many incidents it should be by order of magnitude correct at least from the 1800s. (I converted the incidents into a queryable database, excluding familicides, home intruders and the "other" category to obtain the following charts in a process to be described next post).

Rampage killings really start taking off after the mid-1960s. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how much of that spike comes from religious-ethnic and school shootings (which are counted separately from geographical divisions).

If general rampage killings are purely a function of weapons availability they should be reflected across the jurisdiction of those geographical areas. The fact that they spike in certain categories (religious-ethnic and schools) suggests it is higher than average in certain places due in part to the killer's efforts to act out some pathological or political message related to these settings.

Because rampage killers are rare, they may be quite different from the ordinary murderer. If the mass killer decides to commit mayhem, first the weapon selection is driven by the plan. Availability is one, but only one of the factors. The rampage data reflect the choice. While bladed weapons are less deadly than firearms, the really devastating attacks are carried out using vehicles or arson. Wikipedia has a category for these called other.
Posted by: trailing wife 2019-08-12
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=547835