Mass shootings and mass murders in schools have become a heated argument again in the United States following the recent attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Nineteen year old, expelled student Nikolas Cruz pulled the fire alarm to lure students and staff out into the hallways where he opened fire on the victims using an AR-15 assault rifle. Cruz took the lives of 17 and wounded another 14 others before being subdued and arrested. This violence has reignited the national debate on what the country should be doing to stop this type of violence. The first things to come under attack are gun laws, gun control and the 2nd Amendment. Those fighting against the rights to own guns feel that if there were no guns then
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There were two adults wounded before Lanza shot and killed 6 more adults and 20 elementary students. Lanza lived with his mother who owned the guns he used to commit the attack. He killed his mother prior to coming to the school that day (Kupchik, Brent, and Mowen, 2015, p.1116).
Definitions
The biggest issue found while researching school shooting data in the United States is the definition of mass shooting. The data that was reported by numerous different researchers and reporters varied on whether they counted the victim in the number killed, the number of murdered people it took to qualify for a mass shooting, if injured people counted towards their numbers to qualify as a mass shooting, or if just the firing of a gun on school property counted as a school shooting. Paradice reported that
There is no commonly accepted definition of the term “mass shooting.” The Congressio¬nal Research Office defines a mass shooting as an event in which 4 or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed. This echoes the FBI definition for “mass murder” (Paradice, 2017, p.
There were two adults wounded before Lanza shot and killed 6 more adults and 20 elementary students. Lanza lived with his mother who owned the guns he used to commit the attack. He killed his mother prior to coming to the school that day (Kupchik, Brent, and Mowen, 2015, p.1116).
Definitions
The biggest issue found while researching school shooting data in the United States is the definition of mass shooting. The data that was reported by numerous different researchers and reporters varied on whether they counted the victim in the number killed, the number of murdered people it took to qualify for a mass shooting, if injured people counted towards their numbers to qualify as a mass shooting, or if just the firing of a gun on school property counted as a school shooting. Paradice reported that
There is no commonly accepted definition of the term “mass shooting.” The Congressio¬nal Research Office defines a mass shooting as an event in which 4 or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed. This echoes the FBI definition for “mass murder” (Paradice, 2017, p.