mass shooting, as defined by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an event in which one or more individuals are “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.” The FBI has not set a minimum number of casualties to qualify an event as a mass shooting, but U.S. statute (the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012) defines a “mass killing” as “3 or more killings in a single incident.” For the purposes of this article, both sets of criteria will be applied to the term mass shooting, with the distinction that the shooter or shooters are not included in any fatality statistics.
Police responded to a call just before 3am on Saturday morning for an active shooting situation at a home in Florence, Kentucky.
You’re right it seems. They should’ve said “mass killing”
Semantics matter greatly. The general public hears mass shooting and thinks, random act of violence. They don’t hear “3am crack house was shot up by rival gang”.
It’s done purposefully, mostly just because scaring you into clicking by making you think “this could have been me” gets them more clicks and therefore more ad revenue and perpetuates the idea that active shooter incidents as most people perceive them are way more common than they are, which ups the fear and the clicks and ends up being a really fucked up manipulative cycle, basically the news is abusing us. Harder to scare you if they tell it in a less sensationalist manner, because you won’t connect to those people as deeply or in the same way unless you also happen to hang out in crack houses at 3am and most people do not do that.
There are some groups that perpetuate the same for political reasons as well, like Everytown, MDA, and the Brady campaign, but mostly it’s just plain ol’ “if it bleeds it leads give us attention/money.”
You’re right it seems. They should’ve said “mass killing”
Still weird that we talk about semantics though.
Semantics matter greatly. The general public hears mass shooting and thinks, random act of violence. They don’t hear “3am crack house was shot up by rival gang”.
It’s done purposefully, mostly just because scaring you into clicking by making you think “this could have been me” gets them more clicks and therefore more ad revenue and perpetuates the idea that active shooter incidents as most people perceive them are way more common than they are, which ups the fear and the clicks and ends up being a really fucked up manipulative cycle, basically the news is abusing us. Harder to scare you if they tell it in a less sensationalist manner, because you won’t connect to those people as deeply or in the same way unless you also happen to hang out in crack houses at 3am and most people do not do that.
There are some groups that perpetuate the same for political reasons as well, like Everytown, MDA, and the Brady campaign, but mostly it’s just plain ol’ “if it bleeds it leads give us attention/money.”