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Mass Shootings: A Case Study

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In the early hours of December 14th, 2012 20-year-old Adam Laza armed with a Bushmaster assault rifle, 10mm Glock pistol, 9mm Sig Sauer pistol and 30 round magazines entered Sandy Hooks elementary school in Newton, Connecticut killing twenty-six students and staff members, before taking his own life. Over the last three decades mass shootings and gun violence have been an increasing epidemic across the nation, with a total of 389 people killed, and 385 wounded. The term mass shooting indicates an incident involving victims of gun violence in which three or more people have been killed or injured by a firearm in a single location. According to a statistical data analysis collected by GUN VIOLENCE Archive (GVA), a non-profit corporation, …show more content…

Harvard researchers alleged, “For the method to work, it is crucial to analyze events that are qualitatively similar. In other words, to access the rate of public mass shootings it is necessary to exclude mass killings that are qualitatively distinct, like those taking place in private homes”(motherjones 3). Although mass shootings have a major psychological impact on society, they account only for a small fraction of gun related incidents. In 2013 the Committee on Priorities for a Public Search Agenda to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, under the supervision of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), released a study underlining the major factors of gun violence in America. The study concluded that firearm related suicides outnumbered the firearm related homicide rate, accounting for an annual 61 percent rate, more than the 335,000 people who died from both mass shootings and firearm related incidents in the greater Continental United States. In an effort to decrease the substantial rate of gun violence, communities across the nation have called out for stricter gun-control laws following the aftermath of highly publicized mass shootings in Newton, Connecticut; Aurora, Colorado; Charleston, South Carolina; and Roseburg,

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