What counts as a mass shooting? The dangerous effects of varying definitions
(The Guardian United States)

There were between 11 and 346 mass shootings in 2017, depending on the database. The discrepancy has real-world impactsShortly after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, the research analyst Marisa Booty was tasked with updating data about mass shootings for the Center for Gun Policy and Research and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But while sorting through publicly available data, she found all of the sources defined mass shootings slightly differently.Now, Booty and her team of researchers are calling on the US government to establish a consistent definition of mass shootings. In a study published on 3 December, Booty and other researchers analyzed four commonly cited public databases and found that the reported number of mass shootings in 2017 ranged from 11 to 346. Continue reading...