As of July 28 the Mass Shootings Tracker at shootingtracker.com, an “anti-gun” crowd-sourced project, listed 207 mass shootings in the United States for the 2015 year alone. February and April tied for the least amount of shootings with 18 while June carries the most shootings at 41.
“We hear so much news about useless things while people are being shot everyday,” said Morgan Hutchinson, a sophomore from Mississippi studying biomedical sciences. The mass shootings listed on the Mass Shootings Tracker are defined as, “a shooting spree where four or more people are shot.”
It’s important to understand this definition differs drastically from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s definition of a mass shooting, which “only qualifies as a mass shooting if four or more people are killed,” according to Business Insider.
“I’m sad to think what that number will be at the end of the year,” said Jocelyn Carpenter, a freshman from Missouri studying biology education. Carpenter also explained she’s curious about what will be done to help stop the problem.
The shootings have become so common they typically do not make national news, such as “Seven people shot inside Louisville nightclub,” and “Two dead, two hospitalized in Brice Street shooting,” which only made state news in Kentucky and Louisiana.
However, a recent shooting in Lafayette, La not categorized as a FBI mass shooting gathered the nation's attention. “Two people killed and nine left wounded in Lafayette shooting,” echoed through the headlines of major news companies like CNN and NBC with non-stop coverage.
The story: John Houser, a 59 year-old man, opened fire with a handgun in a movie theater during a night showing of the recently-released comedy “Trainwreck” shooting 11 people. He then attempted to leave with the people fleeing the theater, but turned around and walked back inside when he saw two police officers. After reentering the theatre, Houser proceeded to kill himself with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Emily Wade, a junior majoring in communications from Indiana believes that this shooting caught national attention because of the 2012 Aurora, Colo. shooting where 12 people were killed and 70 others were injured.
“Considering the numbers and looking at the mass shooting tracker I don’t think the Louisiana shooting would’ve been covered, there are shootings on there where 9 people were shot, and I never saw a single headline about it. But since the 2012 movie theater shooting, which was extremely horrendous, happened news companies all flocked to this story.”
Wade further noted, “As bad as it sounds, it’s what’s happening in America.”