Talk:List of mass shootings in the United States in 2019

Request

The gun lobby suggests that the general population being armed makes society safer. As this data is collated is it possible to include how the perpetrator was stopped. Were they stopped by Police or armed civilian intervention. I have not phrased this very well.

Just a notice

I wanted to check the sources for both Januray 1st shootings, but they are both broken now, not giving an article.

20 vs. 251

It was 20 last night and now it’s 251. We need to settle on how we’re defining the terms here. PokeHomsar (talk) 12:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Context is king, and relevant.

This article is missing context, per event. When the general public wants to know about mass shootings, most people do not care about gang violence, family murders, etc. (Note, emotions have no place in scientific data collection) There is a difference between a someone going out and shooting random strangers in public locations with group gatherings and targeted murders. To clarify - a gang member doing a "drive-by" intending to kill a specific person, or persons; or a person who has had a psychotic break and murders their family; or a person who is robbing/mugging a store or small group of people.

Yes, the definition is 4+ victims. However, if the same event happened to have 1 less person on scene to become a victim, the event would not qualify as a mass shooting. Likewise, an event where a person was apprehended or killed without killing or injuring more than 3 other persons is also not considered a mass shooting, regardless of how many people were present for the event.

So, this article is flawed from the perspective of context.

I pose that this article be updated to indicate what events not only reflect the 4+ victim count, but also the number of potential victims; as well as base reasoning behind the actions of the event - i.e. gang violence, domestic violence, or political / terror motivated violence. There is a difference. Political and terrorist motivated violent crimes are on the rise, from a near non-existence only a short few decades ago. The others have existed for centuries.

Additionally, citing politically biased organizations is less than beneficial to the relevance of any article on Wikipedia. This includes Mother Jones and USA Today. However, noting that these are the sources of such citations does allow the educated reader to understand that there ***may*** be a political bias present.

</2¢> 2603:9000:B605:6160:B9A3:2CF4:321:378D (talk) 12:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC) ~AeSix

Agreed, gang-related and family killings shouldn't be listed here (with perhaps a few possible exceptions).

Articles like this need a very clear set of inclusion/exclusion criteria, and the definitions that are currently being used have the benefit of not only being roughly similar, but also being criteria used by media and researchers (rather than some arbitrary criteria used only by Wikipedia). A major problem with your suggestion to exclude family or gang violence is that in many cases, it can't be confidently determined whether an incident was gang-related or motivated by family conflict—you will often see sources saying things like "police are investigating whether the shooting was gang-related", but nothing more concrete. Similarly, shootings involving family members are not always mutually exclusive with people who are, as you say, "going out and shooting random strangers in public locations with group gatherings and targeted murders": the 2019 Dayton shooting is a perfect example of that. GorillaWarfare (talk) 05:00, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

True, although the Dayton shooting also included many non-relatives, that being said I think their can be exceptions for extreme events, for instance in the 1975 Easter Sunday massacre the victims were all family members of the shooter, but due to the large number of causalities (11 in total) it is still listed in the deadliest mass shootings since it had over 10 victims.

I think your suggested criteria are far too fuzzy to implement. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:58, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Citation link not available outside USA?

I haven't checked through all the links, but the one I clicked on was for the 5th of August shooting spree. The NYC one. The website is pix11.com and it returns a message suggesting that, for no apparent reason, the "content is not available in your region". An alterative source/link that is available in all (uncensored) countries would be better. --82.2.5.153 (talk) 01:42, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

How bizarre... I've replaced the source with one that should hopefully work. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:47, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 August 2019

This entire article needs a rework as explained in the Talk section.

No normal person uses this definition of a mass shooting. No normal person would say four people shot in a bad drug deal is a mass shooting. This is insane. Wikipedia should not be used as an anti-gun propaganda source - it's a non-biased, objective platform for facts. Again - nobody would say that 2 police officers and 2 suspects shot is a "mass shooting" as one of these examples listed says.

This entire article should be based off the mother-jones database instead of the Gun Violence Archive. It's kept up to date and its definition of a mass shooting is a commonly accepted definition. Katfactz (talk) 13:11, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Per the instructions in the template, edit requests are meant for very specific requests where you provide precise wording to be changed. "Rewrite the whole article" is a discussion best suited to the talk page without an edit request, as I see you've done below. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

This whole article is wrong and needs a rework.

Hi. I'm a statistics expert and criminologist who has studied this issue for 20 years.

Every serious criminologist defines a mass shooting as one with random victims not related to another crime in progress. Every - single - one - of - us.

By this measure, the leading statistic in this article is WAY off. Epic propaganda proportions, off. Question the legitimacy of wikipedia for the rest of our lives, off.

Just look at the list. The most recent as of 9AM Eastern on 8/21/19 is "Four teenagers were wounded after an argument escalated during a potential party in a hotel room". Are you kidding? This is not a mass shooting. Neither was this! "Seven people were injured in a shooting at a party" Further, the title in wikipedia of the linked article is wrong.

The most common-sense definition of a mass shooting, the one that we all think of when we think of a mass shooting, is "an event where someone selects four or more people and kills them in an indiscriminate manner". Indiscriminate, meaning, no other crime in progress, not gang or domestic violence related. Random murder. This is literally what we all know to be a mass shooting. This is what's on the news - not "four shot in gang dispute". So why do we pretend there's another definition in this article?

This is a clear attempt at creating anti-gun propaganda.

" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Katfactz (talk • contribs) 13:29, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

If everyone thought like you say they do, some actual tracking group would use your definition, or at least common sense suggests one might. Can you point to one that does, or even a single serious criminologist? Your premise that "mass shooting" is a distinct crime from some "other crime" seems seriously wonky to me. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:27, August 21, 2019 (UTC)