By Jennifer Mascia, The Trace, June 1, 2021
Shortly after the May 26 shooting at a San Jose, California, light rail yard, which left nine people dead, national media outlets seized on a pair of sobering statistics: The rampage was the 232nd mass shooting in 2021, and the 17th mass shooting in the U.S. in less than a week.
The source of those figures is the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), an increasingly sought-after resource for gun violence statistics. GVA defines mass shootings as incidents in which bullets hit four or more people, regardless of whether any of them died. That differs from the FBI’s definition of mass murder, which only counts incidents that led to four or more people being killed, by guns or any other means. News outlets have long relied on the FBI’s definition in reporting on the prevalence of mass shootings. But amid back-to-back high-profile gun rampages this spring in Atlanta, Boulder, Colorado, and Indianapolis, several mainstream media organizations — including The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, and CNN — are using GVA’s broader definition.
While federal and state tallies of gun injuries and deaths can take more than a year to be released, GVA tracks shootings in close to real-time. Its staff of two dozen researchers culls news articles and police reports to provide up-to-date figures on mass shootings, defensive gun use, suicides, and other categories of gun violence. GVA makes its data available free of charge on its website.
Comments (0)