Bridges Tristan, Tober Tara Leigh, Brazzell Melanie
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Lancet Reg Health Am. 2023 May 5;22:100504. doi: 10.1016/j.lana.2023.100504. eCollection 2023 Jun.
The United States experiences more mass shootings than any other nation in the world. Various entities have sought to collect data on this phenomenon, but there is no scholarly consensus regarding how best to define mass shootings. As a result, existing datasets include different incidents, limiting our understanding of the impact of mass gun violence in the U.S.
We compared five datasets of mass shootings for each year included in five databases (2013-2020) and identified overlaps between each database's incidents. These overlaps and divergences between datasets persisted after applying the strictest fatality threshold (four or more) in mass shootings scholarship and policy.
The datasets collectively include 3155 incidents, but the number of incidents included in each individual dataset varies from 57 to 2955 incidents. Only 25 incidents (0.008% of all incidents) are included in all five datasets. This finding persists even when applying the strictest criteria for mass shootings (four or more fatalities).
Data discrepancies prevent us from understanding the public health impact of mass gun violence. These discrepancies result from a lack of scholarly consensus on how to define mass shootings, likely the downstream consequence of the politicization of gun violence research. We argue for a broad definition of a mass shooting and a government-supported data collection program to remedy these discrepancies. Such steps can improve the quality of research and support policy-making and journalism on the subject.
This research was supported by the Pahl Initiative on the Study of Critical Social Issues, University of California, Santa Barbara.
美国发生的大规模枪击事件比世界上任何其他国家都多。各种实体机构都试图收集有关这一现象的数据，但对于如何最好地定义大规模枪击事件，学术界尚未达成共识。因此，现有的数据集包含不同的事件，这限制了我们对美国大规模枪支暴力影响的理解。
我们比较了五个数据库（2013 - 2020年）中每年的五个大规模枪击事件数据集，并确定了每个数据库事件之间的重叠部分。在应用大规模枪击事件学术研究和政策中最严格的死亡人数阈值（四人或更多）后，数据集之间的这些重叠和差异仍然存在。
这些数据集总共包含3155起事件，但每个单独数据集中包含的事件数量从57起到2955起不等。所有五个数据集中仅包含25起事件（占所有事件的0.008%）。即使应用最严格的大规模枪击事件标准（四人或更多死亡），这一发现仍然存在。
数据差异阻碍了我们理解大规模枪支暴力对公共健康的影响。这些差异源于学术界对如何定义大规模枪击事件缺乏共识，这可能是枪支暴力研究政治化的下游后果。我们主张对大规模枪击事件进行广泛定义，并建立一个由政府支持的数据收集计划来弥补这些差异。这些措施可以提高研究质量，并为该主题的政策制定和新闻报道提供支持。
本研究得到了加利福尼亚大学圣巴巴拉分校帕尔批判性社会问题研究倡议的支持。
