Do we count the shooting at Chabad of Poway as a "mass shooting"?

[Dill]

(04-29-2019, 01:16 PM)GMDino Wrote: Oh no.  I thought that I was clear that I feel it is a mass shooting and wondered what others thought.  If not my responses to SSF should have cleared that up.

When I want to be snarky it's pretty obvious and 99% of the time in direct response to other perceived snark.     This was not one of those times.  

My response then is, no, it is not a "mass shooting."  I'm fine with the definition of 4+ randomly chosen or symbolic/representative victims. But I do think it was a an "act of terrorism," or at least a hate crime.

This reminds me somewhat of the definition of what counts as a "War"; most historians/sociologists/political scientists who study the subject agree on a 1,000 death threshold.

That definition then determines the answer to questions like "How many wars have there been since 1970?"  If the threshold were dropped to 500 or raised to 1,500, the answer would be different.

If we want to understand why mass shootings occur, then we need to agree on what counts as one, whether intent matters, and if so, what sort of intent?  If we can at least get USEFUL answers to those questions, definitions which enable us to determine trends and perhaps their social location and causes, then we ought to be doing that. The point is not just to help reporters and those who compile crime stats, but to understand criminal trends and hopefully their causes.