New Data Says You Stopped
Mass Murder Most of the Time

We live in a media driven culture. We also have government agencies putting out biased reports that serve their political masters. It is rare that the media even questions the agency reports. That wouldn't matter, but many of us confuse media headlines with facts. I've seen people on Facebook say that there were hundreds of "mass shootings" this year and that our children are not safe in school any longer. They are wrong, and you stop mass-murder most of the time.

Please let me pose a different question.

If an ordinary citizen stops mass-murder and the mainstream media refuses to report it, did it really happen?

According to the FBI, the answer is almost always, "No!"

I am a data geek and I love to explore the deeper questions around public events. For example, how do we define "mass-murder", and has that definition changed? How are the murderers stopped? It turns out that you get wildly different answers depending on subtle changes in the questions you ask.

To start, "mass shooting" is a relatively recent term. There is no FBI definition of it. By some accounts, there is a "mass shooting" in Chicago almost every night. We don't have good historical data on "mass-shootings" from year to year. We could almost say that "mass shootings" are everything that isn't a "mass-murder."

The term "mass-murder" was used by criminologists and statisticians to describe a specific type of violence. .....