One in 15 Americans has witnessed a mass shooting, a new study shows, revealing the depth and impact of the epidemic of gun violence that has washed over the US in recent decades.
The study found that about 7% of US adults have been present at the scene of a mass shooting in their lifetime, and more than 2% have been injured during one, according to new a report from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Since 2014, there have been nearly 5,000 mass shootings documented nationwide, with more than 500 occurring annually since 2020, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
I think you’re relying too heavily on your anecdotal experience here. Maybe you’ve never seen a gun fired in anger, but there are about 13,000 gun homicides per year.
Plus, the nature of gatherings mean that a very small number of events can have many witnesses, especially if defined to include people who heard gunshots.
Take the most extreme example, the 2017 Vegas shooting, the single worst mass shooting event in American history. There were people killed and injured in the event. Under anyone’s definition that was a mass shooting.
There were 22,000 attendees at that music festival. How many staff, crew, contractors, vendors, performance artists and their own staffs? How many cops and first responders were there? How many were in the 3200-room hotel and casino who had to be evacuated during the response? How many people heard gunshots in the open air, or saw muzzle flashes from the hotel room? 50,000?
Same with the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. Lots of people were within hearing range of the shots.
These types of events have a lot of people present. If 4 people are dying from a shooting, what’s the average number of people wounded? How many are present?
The math is somewhat counterintuitive, and can explain a lot of the high number.