FBI Reports Mass Shootings Are Up But Are They?

If you’ve looked at the news for September 24, 2014 you’ll see reports like:

F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000 – New York Times

FBI Releases Report Examining Mass Shootings – ABC News

FBI Study Finds Mass Shootings On The Rise, Often End Before Police Can Respond – Huffington Post

FBI: Mass Shootings Are on The Rise –  The Daily Beast

FBI: Mass shooting incidents occurring more frequently – CNN In-Depth

This in relation to a recent FBI report that suggests that the cases of “active shooter incidents” has grown more common from 2000 to 2013.

While this study might confirm what some people believe to be true based on headlines they have seen on the internet and television, Reason Magazine took a closer look at the report’s facts that show a skewing of the numbers.  Most people do not realize that there are competing definitions of the term “mass shooting”.  This leads to a real problem when people try to make sense of the information that they hear.  The FBI’s report includes events that most people would not consider a mass shooting.

The standard government definition of an active shooter is:

“an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.”

And while the FBI report doesn’t mention firearms, the word shooter obviously excludes other means of murder.  The FBI report tweaked the government’s definition by excluding the word “confined” assumedly because they did not want to leave out crimes committed outdoors. They also included killings connected to gang rivalries or the drug trade – a major difference between these numbers and the mass-shooting statistics assembled by criminologists. Also, rather than basing its definition on how many people were killed, the FBI report focuses on homicidal intent. So, for example, if the perp only wounds his victims, or if he doesn’t even manage to do that, he still gets counted.

James Alan Fox, one of the country’s leading authorities on mass murder is skeptical of the report.   “Unlike mass shooting data, which comes from routinely collected police reports, there is no official data source for active shooter events.”  Fox goes on to explain that many times the data collected for these studies comes not only from police records but also press accounts using the term ‘active shooter’ and similar words. The term “active shooter” is actually a new word in the American vocabulary, coined primarily from the 1999 Columbine event.  With the availability of digitized and searchable news services growing tremendously over the time span covered by the FBI’s report data, it becomes unclear as to whether the increase that the FBI is reporting is related to actual cases or to the availability and accessibility of news reports surrounding such events.  And, when you look at the FBI paper for its sources, it identifies, several studies that rely on such searches.

For Fox, a vocal critic of the way the phrase “active shooter” has come to be used, the chief concern is that people understand that “these events are exceptionally rare and not necessarily on the increase.” While he fully supports serious efforts to prevent and prepare for such crimes, he also thinks it “critical that we avoid unnecessarily and carelessly scaring the American public with questionable statements about a surge in active shooter events.”