2d ago

One in 15 Americans has witnessed a mass shooting – study

www.theguardian.com One in 15 Americans has witnessed a mass shooting – study

Report finds that 7% of Americans have been present at the scene of a mass shooting and 2% have been injured in one

Summary

A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder finds that 7% of U.S. adults have witnessed a mass shooting, and over 2% have been injured in one.

Researchers define mass shootings as incidents where four or more people are shot in public spaces. With nearly 5,000 such events since 2014, experts stress the need for public health strategies to address the psychological and physical impacts.

The study highlights how mass shootings are not isolated events but a widespread issue affecting millions of Americans.

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2d ago

One in 15 Americans has witnessed a mass shooting – study

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/mar/08/one-in-15-americans-has-witnessed-a-mass-shooting-study

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35 comments

Adults. I expect this number to skyrocket as gen A becomes adults. Considering they are the kids carrying bullet proof backpacks and doing active shooter drills in school.

That number seems incomprehensible, and absolutely gut-wrenching. The fact we have to continue down this path of generational PTSD and survivor syndrome is maddening and heartbreaking.
- Yeah, I am expecting fireworks displays being a thing of the past in a few years.
  
  Drone light shows are really cool I guess.

That’s seems high. I know way more than 15 people and none of them have seen a mass shooting
- Depressing counterpoint: some people know a whole schools worth of people who has seen a mass shooting.
  
  Fair point
  
  Awful. Headline number still seems high when there's hundreds of millions in the USA.
- Hi, my name is sp3ctr4l, good to meet you!
  A few years back, I was walking along a sidewalk, heading home from a bar, approaching within 100 feet of a group of people.
  But, before I got too close, a car came screaming down the road from in front of me, and then slowed way down as it got parallel with the group.
  ... And then a krink (AK pistol) emerged from a window, magazine emptied, whole lot of blood curdling screaming and possibly some return fire (sounded like a different caliber) as I dove through some hedges for cover.
  Thats a mass shooting, I could have been shot, perhaps now maybe you could say you know me.
  
  "But that's gang violence, it doesn't count."
  some people, for whatever reason
  
  Jeez, I’m glad you weren’t hurt. That definitely counts.
- Shit, I’m wrong.
  Five years ago my step kids were riding in the car with their dad and some car side swiped him.
  They pulled over and while their dad was calling the cops, the other car pulled up along side them and fired and gun at their car. No one was hurt, but they coulda been.
  Not a MASS shooting i guess, but god damned closed enough.
  Of course the cops were completely useless despite having the dashcam footage and the license plate number.
- That's not really how statistics work.
  For example, 1 in 10 dentists recommended a specific brand of toothpaste.
  You could know 10 dentists in your town and not one of them recommends that specific toothpaste. But in another town 2 out of 10 might. This means between both towns you are left with a 1 out of 10 average.
  1/10 is equal to 2/20 = 10%
  So, if one town might have a really high shooting rate and 100% of the residents in that town were witnesses and the next town over had no shootings at all.
  If we assume both towns have the same number of residents we would be left with a 50% of all residents in the area are witnesses to a shooting. This means if you lived in the town with no shooting and were told 50% of residents were witnesses you would not be able to find a single person to confirm the theory. Even if you knew everyone in your specific town.
- When I was in high school a kid brought a gun with the intent to shoot up the school, but he got caught with it and ran before he was able to use it. We were in lockdown for over an hour while they searched for this kid, so while it thankfully wasn't a mass shooting it was still scary and it affected the whole school. Some kids were so rattled they didn't show up the next day or two. If the shooting did happen that would add 2,000 people to the number who have experienced a mass shooting.
  
  I’m glad no one was hurt! Sounds scary
- Respondents were asked: “Have you personally ever been physically present on the scene of a mass shooting in your lifetime?”
  Unfortunately, it's a self-reported study. While there is a lot of math used in self-reporting to account for people who lie or misunderstand the question, the results likely aren't reproducible.
  Self-reported studies can be helpful in some ways but they have deep limitations on accuracy as opposed to "feels."
  Arguably, without mass surveillance and access to data from mass surveillance, there really isn't another good way to find out who was in physical proximity to a mass shooting other than self-reporting.
  
  The question seems open to interpretation (which is bad for surveys like this).
  If I visit a location that was the site of a mass shooting a few years later, have I been "physically present on the scene of a mass shooting"?
  I think you could reasonably answer yes: you've been to the physical place where it happened, even if not at the time it happened.

2% have been injured? Out of 250 million adults? 5 million Americans have been injured in mass shootings? Over 50 years, 100000 every year? Over 200 every day?
- In the survey of 10,000 people just under 7% of respondents answered yes and 2.18 % of respondents said they had been injured, which not only includes having been shot, but also struck by shrapnel or trampled by people fleeing the scene or suffering other injuries as they sought to escape.
  That does seem very high though.
  
  Why is this data collected through a survey and not pure statistics? Can’t you lie on a survey? This is bat shit crazy. These numbers aren’t real. Maybe people were responding yes to witnessing a mass shooting because they saw a video? I mean I guess they technically did. But 2 percent of the population being injured in a mass shooting is just straight up fake news. Unless we are counting like a psychological injury from seeing a video maybe but that’s wack.
- This can't be right... that would mean that on average my town of 100,000 people should contain about 1,400 adults who have been injured in some way specifically during a mass shooting. I feel like it's off by orders of magnitude?
- 6,828,820 is 2% of the population listed on census.gov right now.
- With 500 mass shootings/year, that's a whole lot of mass casualty events happening every day here that we just dont hear about, I guess? Even if these are drivebys, thats a whole lot of people standing around in the street where it happens. Idk, without digging into the methodology of the study this seems pretty suspect.
  
  Even if these are drivebys, thats a whole lot of people standing around in the street where it happens
  They're also counting people who can hear it, so that's a few blocks worth of people indoors and out.

And gun control in America is still a pipe dream.

Remember when this was one of the higher things on the list of concerns?
- And then we decided not to do anything about it. No gun control, no mental health services, no improvement to communities.

35 comments