The recent wave of mass-shooting incidents may generate the impression that such events are on the rise, but this simply hasn’t been the case, according to a prominent criminologist at Northeastern University.
Based on data from his long-term study of gun violence, criminologist James Alan Fox has found that there has been “no major upward trend” in gun violence, NY Mag reports. (The study only goes up to 2012, the most recent year for which the FBI has released data.)
Fox’s findings dovetail with a May 2013 report on firearm violence (1993 to 2011) released by the U.S. Department of Justice which indicates that gun violence has actually declined in the past two decades.
The report was included in a Washington Post article debunking gun violence myths.
In the article, Dr. Dewey G. Cornell, a forensic psychology criminologist and director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, posits that “a few extra cases (of mass-shootings) in a short time frame” are either “chance fluctuations” or “copycat effects.” He also points out the rarity of school shootings, citing a statistic which indicates that children are about 100 times more likely to be killed outside of school than inside it.
Additionally, CNN performed an analysis of an Everytown for Gun Safety statistic reporting that there have been 74 school shootings in the last 18 months, since the Sandy Hook massacre. CNN found that the figure between then and the latest incident in Oregon is 15.
According to the NY Mag article, the pervasive sense that the rate of gun violence has increased is likely due to the “availability heuristic,” or the fact that humans make evaluations based on what they recently heard on TV or read in the newspaper.
These gun violence studies are being reported after President Obama deplored the prevalence of gun violence in the U.S. on Tuesday, describing gun violence incidents as “once-a-week” events and calling upon the public to do some serious “soul searching” about gun control policies.
