A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
There have been at least 57 in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.
Editor's note, 8/5/12: On Sunday morning a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin left at least seven people dead.
It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado on July 20 is the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades.
Since 1982, there have been at least 57 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.
Of the 132 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and high-powered handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to massacre students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater.
Just under half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (11 and 17, respectively); the other 29 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases. Only one of the killers was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) Explore the map for further details—we do not consider the map to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used to identify mass murders, we believe that we've produced one of the most comprehensive rundowns available on this particular type of traumatic violence. (Mass murders represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers, jump to page 2.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Interactive map and much much more at the link.
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