Talk:Mass shooting

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mass shooting article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1: 4 days

Crime and Criminal Biography Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Politics: Gun politics Low‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Gun politics task force (assessed as Low-importance).

Death High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Disaster management Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Firearms Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Firearms, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of firearms on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FirearmsWikipedia:WikiProject FirearmsTemplate:WikiProject FirearmsFirearms articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article was nominated for deletion on 10 August 2015. The result of the discussion was No consensus.

Text and/or other creative content from this version of Mass shooting was copied or moved into Mass shootings in the United States with this edit on 5 November 2017. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to governmental regulation of firearm ownership; the social, historical and political context of such regulation; and the people and organizations associated with these issues, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Trust and Safety team maintains a list of crisis support resources.
If you see a threat of harm on Wikipedia, please follow these steps.

Poor source given in Sex and Race section[edit]

Regarding this paragraph: "A study by Statista showed that 65 out of 116 (56%) U.S. mass shootings in a period from 1982 to 2019 involved "white" shooters,[55] roughly in line with the roughly 60% of the U.S. population regarded as white in 2018.[56] According to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine, the race of the shooters is approximately proportionate to the overall U.S. population, although Asians are overrepresented and Latinos underrepresented.[52]"

Statista is a very poor source. All information is hidden behind a paywall. Additionally, it seems to be pretty obvious that the source Statista uses is the Mother Jones database referred to in the very next sentence of this paragraph. That is because Statista has 121 incidents, where Mother Jones also has 121. Mind you, the 121 figure is not some published agreed upon number but one Mother Jones has selected based on certain criteria. Therefore this paragraph appears to be pulling from multiple sources, but is in fact the same source.

Removal of perpetrators section[edit]

@Love of Corey: There was no edit summary given for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mass_shooting&curid=31883778&diff=1041527226&oldid=1039773372 Any particular reason for the removal? - Scarpy (talk) 05:49, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Scarpy: I guess it is because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and the perpetrators section is only meant to give the characteristics of mass shooters, rather than giving a list (List of rampage killers already does the job of giving a list of mass shooters pretty well). And unnecessary mentions of the names of mass shooters can cause contagion.--RekishiEJ (talk) 17:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence appears to contradict itself to a casual reader[edit]

"The Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 defines mass killings as three or more killings in a single incident, however the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 does not define mass shootings"

It took me three readings ... and for the third reading I copied the entire sentence into a text editor, placing the second half of the sentence directly below the first half before I noticed there is in fact no contradiction.

The difference is "killings" vs. "shootings".

It is a long sentence, and there are twenty-three words between "killings" and "shootings". By the time I got to the end of the sentence the subtlety was lost on me. -bobB (talk) 00:31, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, whoever wrote that seems to think the reader should understand why "shooting" needs to be specified, but since anyone killed in a shooting is also a killing, everything after the comma seems vague and unnecessary. I think it can be dropped. 24.251.236.40 (talk) 21:10, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it, however if the point was just to clarify that it's not specifically about shootings (the article's scope) then I would suggest changing it to something like "The IAVCA does not specifically define mass shootings, but defines mass killings as...". 24.251.236.40 (talk) 21:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: English 102[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2023 and 5 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 6ftblexican (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by 6ftblexican (talk) 18:51, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]