I see the data you’ve linked, but find it fascinating what the parent comment is implying.
OP is asking: “guns have been around for so long, why are mass shootings more common only recently?”
Parent comment’s answer is “total murder rates used to be higher before, and the rate is now less than what it used to be before”
Even looking at your homocide data, what does that mean? Why have mass shootings increased?
And the further question that brings to my mind is: are people putting these 2 pieces of unrelated data together, to draw the conclusions that support their own bias? Great that overall murder rates are down compared to the 70s and 80s…but that doesn’t mean the country doesn’t have a gun problem, or that mass shootings aren’t unnecessary and avoidable deaths and a sign of some underlying unhealthiness in a community.
Mass shootings weren’t even defined before. We didn’t talk about them because they weren’t tracked. Even now the definition of mass shooting isn’t settled, with some definitions having about a dozen per year, and others having about 2 per day.
I see the data you’ve linked, but find it fascinating what the parent comment is implying.
OP is asking: “guns have been around for so long, why are mass shootings more common only recently?”
Parent comment’s answer is “total murder rates used to be higher before, and the rate is now less than what it used to be before”
Even looking at your homocide data, what does that mean? Why have mass shootings increased?
And the further question that brings to my mind is: are people putting these 2 pieces of unrelated data together, to draw the conclusions that support their own bias? Great that overall murder rates are down compared to the 70s and 80s…but that doesn’t mean the country doesn’t have a gun problem, or that mass shootings aren’t unnecessary and avoidable deaths and a sign of some underlying unhealthiness in a community.
Mass shootings weren’t even defined before. We didn’t talk about them because they weren’t tracked. Even now the definition of mass shooting isn’t settled, with some definitions having about a dozen per year, and others having about 2 per day.
Can we factor in things counted as massacres rather than mass shootings?