35 Mass Murders Across America in 30 Years

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 Aurora, Colorado, on Friday is the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 35 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the United States. We have mapped them below, including details on the shooter's identity, the date of the event, and the number of victims injured and killed. We do not consider the map comprehensive (and there are countless incidents of deadly gun violence in America, of course). We used the following criteria to identify incidents of mass murder:

• The killings were carried out by a lone shooter (except in the case of the Columbine massacre, which involved two shooters).

• The shootings happened during a single incident and in a public place (except possibly in the case of a deer hunter in Wisconsin who killed his victims after a trespassing dispute).

• The shooter took the lives of at least four people (an FBI crime classification report identifies an individual as a mass murderer—as opposed to a spree killer or a serial killer—if he kills four or more people in a single incident, and typically in a single location).

• If the shooter died or was hurt from injuries sustained during the incident, he is included in the victim count.

Sources: Associated Press, Canada.com, and additional research by Mother Jones.

For the latest on the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, jump over to our updated explainer.

Update, 11:30pm PDT: Thanks to all our great readers for the comments, and for flagging several other incidents that fit the above criteria for mass murder. We will update the map data soon to include the Xerox killings in Hawaii, the Westside Middle School killings in Arkansas (involving two shooters, like Columbine), the Amish school killings in Pennsylvania, the Trolley Square killings in Utah, the Northern Illinois University killings, and the Oikos University killings in Oakland. We did include the Fort Hood killings in Texas in the initial roundup, but due to a technical glitch that incident is not currently appearing on the map; we'll fix that as well. (We chose not to include Mark O. Barton in Atlanta, Richard Baumhammers in Pittsburgh, or the Red Lake reservation massacre in Minnesota, whose perpetrators are classified as spree killers.)

Update, July 21, 1:30pm PDT: We've added the above incidents to the map, as well the Stockton schoolyard shooting in California, the Seattle cafe shooting in Washington, and the Kirkwood city council shooting in Missouri.

Original Article
Source: mother jones
Author:  Gavin Aronsen and Mark Follman