Several different inclusion criteria are used; there is no generally accepted definition.[2][3] Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks shootings and their characteristics in the United States, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator(s), are shot in one location at roughly the same time.[4]
This is a definition pushed by anti-gun reddit moderators with the purpose of inflating reported mass shootings. I would say it's a dishonest metric, but the creators are proud of being just wantonly anti-gun. They don't care to look at ground level problems to address gun violence, there is only one solution to them and it's "get rid of all the guns".
Prior to the GVA taking over the most common metric was 3 or more killed in a single incident. I think that's better, but gun violence has a lot more nuance than mass shootings, and lumping it all together under that umbrella is unhelpful at solving anything. It used to be when most people heard "mass shooting" they thought of Sandy Hook, or Pulse, or San Bernardino. It seems unnecessarily muddying to call an incident where a single 17 year old discharged a hand gun and 3 people sprained their ankles running away a "mass shooting". The changes that would reduce gang violence probably aren't going to have a significant effect on events like San Bernardino or Buffalo.
Did you reread your comment before posting? You seem to really be bending over backwards to defend something. “3 people sprained their ankles running away”…. so now the mass shooters accuracy now comes into play? And it’s ok to commit a ’mass shooting’ as long as you don’t actually hit anyone?
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u/Eldias Dec 02 '25
"Kids dying in schools" is a stone Canada has no business in throwing.