Armed with Reason: The Podcast - Episode 9
We are joined by Jennifer Mascia from The Trace to discuss the definition -- and terrifying new normal -- of mass shootings in America.
Jennifer Mascia on a recent CNN appearance
For our latest podcast, GVPedia founder and President, Devin Hughes, and Executive Director, Caitlin Clarkson Pereira, welcome activist, former New York Times contributor, and current The Trace journalist, Jennifer Mascia, to explain the differing and often infuriating definitions of a mass shooting, and our country’s creeping normalization of such events as a “death by a thousand cuts.”
You can listen to the chat via our channel on Spotify, as well as watch on YouTube, or read the transcription, below.
We hope you’ll tune in and let us know not only what you think, but what you’d like to hear more about in the future. And if you are interested in recommending a guest, or even being one yourself, please let us know!
Given the abundance of gun violence in our country, it is critical to have the ability to discuss and advocate for a safer community. This podcast is one more way for the movement to do just that.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:
Caitlin: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the first episode of the Armed With Reason podcast here in the year 2024. Devin and I are excited that this week we are having Jennifer Mascia back on the podcast with us. She is a member of The Trace and somebody who is well versed in endless topics when it comes to the world of gun violence. But given the mass shooting that happened yesterday at Perry High School in Iowa, we thought for this podcast that we would focus on something very specific -- which is actually the definition of a mass shooting. So Jennifer, maybe you can just start off today's podcast by giving us the definition of mass shootings and maybe how many there were last year in the United States.
Jennifer Mascia: Sure. So there's no official definition of a mass shooting in the United States. Um, it's been defined in different places, a couple of different places in federal code. The FBI has a working definition, and really it centers around deaths. Four killed is the working definition the FBI uses, and three killed generally. And neither of these specify an instrument of death. It's just mass killing. So it's not even really specific to this problem. So, uh, federal law has a lot to catch up on. And it is all about the body count. Injuries don't factor into what the government views as the severity of a mass casualty attack. So the shooting of ten people on the subway last year, in 2022, in Brooklyn would not count. Um, and why does this matter? This matters because of funding that could be unlocked for victims. This matters because of government response. Although, as we've seen with mass shootings that may not have as many dead than injured, the federal government does step in. The ATF will help with resources if there's an investigation. But there is a belief that there should be a special designation for this very American problem we've been dealing with for 30 years now. There's only two states that have defined mass shooting. Texas has a definition for mass shooting in its penal code. New York just passed a bill that defines a mass shooting, for the purposes of unlocking funds after these tragedies, as four or more killed. So again, it's about severity of loss of life. And there's a couple problems with that. One of the problems is that medical advances are such that somebody who might have died in one of these 35 years ago is now resuscitated and lives. Uh, trauma surgery also has made great strides. And, you know, it shouldn't, uh, they shouldn't be written out of an incident just because of advances in medical technology. And another reason is that a lot of mass shootings where people are injured instead of killed, happened in communities of color that are experiencing persistent gun violence. And if we don't involve them in the definition, then we can write off a certain percentage of our gun violence problem to make it seem like it's less big than it is. Anything that minimizes the scope of our gun violence problem is to the benefit of Second Amendment activists and the gun lobby. And a definition that includes people who are injured is a larger rendering of this problem. So we had 40 mass murders last year. And Gun Violence Archive defines that as like a traditional mass shooting like FBI -- four killed. That's mass gun murder. Mass shooting, as defined by Gun Violence Archive -- which is a nonprofit that's used by legacy media, local media -- is four injured. We had 656 of those last year. 40 mass gun murders is bad in any year, 656 shootings where four more people were shot is bad! 40 is bad 656 is bad. Any way you cut it, it's bad. But there's interested parties who want to make this problem seem like it's smaller than it is. So that's the "Devin-sized" explanation for that.
Caitlin: So the Perry High School shooting yesterday -- depending on who you're speaking to -- one person as of now, one student killed, five students injured. And from some sources, it would be considered a mass shooting, and other sources it would not. Is that correct?
Jennifer Mascia: Correct. One killed, five injured is not five people killed, one person injured. And it's really a problem of we have so many shootings in this country that have multiple victims and multiple survivors. It's come to the point where the American public cannot wrap their mind around this problem. So what we've done is we've counted the worst of the worst. That's really all we can keep track of is the worst of the worst. So by those standards, you know, there's not enough air time really to devote to, you know, five people were injured. Do you know how many shootings that describes from last week? Definitely more than one. CNN can't break in every time five people are wounded. There's too much other news out there -- and that fact alone is sad. Why are we whittling away the definition of mass shootings? Because there's too many shootings. We can't wrap our minds around them all. So before the victim account was known yesterday, multiple victims, the impression was that this was going to be a serious fatality, a high fatality incident. When it became obvious that it wasn't, the national news coverage dropped immediately. How much blood needs to be spilled really for for it to break in to programing. And I've kind of calculated that as about half a dozen dead, and not in a family annihilation domestic violence incident in a public place. So, yeah.
Caitlin: And that dropping off of the media coverage situation is not unique to to Perry High School. That's what you've seen recently when the number is less than six or so dead. Is that what you're saying?
Jennifer Mascia: Yep. The UNLV shooting in early December, the body count wasn't evident for a few hours. Um, you know, as law enforcement was stabilizing the scene. There were early reports that it could be several dead. And it turned out not to be. Um, it didn't meet the threshold of mass shooting, by any definition. And three producers from CNN had called me before the the casualty count was known to talk about the shooting. And as the victim count came out, I think it was, uh, two dead, one injured, or three dead. Every producer, one by one, canceled. It's not CNN's fault. It's not MSNBC's, it's not the individual media organization. We make calculations every day about what we have time to cover. And there are so many shootings that if it bleeds, it leads. And if it bleeds more, it leads more. And that's just a sad comment on America. This these calculations aren't being made in England. Five people are killed in a family shooting in England, it makes international news. So....
Caitlin: Well, I was going to ask you to go over the FBI definition, but you covered that in your in your opening. So I'm going to pass it on to Devin to follow up with a couple more questions for you.
Devin: Yeah. So I kind of want to re-touch on why the four or more shot definition matters, because I am very oftentimes in these cases it's a matter of millimeters between whether somebody dies or lives or a matter of seconds. And you'll have cases where, like one of the largest mass shootings by numbers shot occurred in Arkansas with like 20-something shot like multiple years ago, but nobody died in it. And so while that's not a "mass shooting" according to some. And yet, like overlooking those sort of cases seems to just give people a misleading sense of gun violence, and also, in a way, dishonors the survivors of those shootings where they're just kind of erased.
Jennifer Mascia: Surviving a shooting is not a guaranteed happy ending. People die years later, sometimes of their injuries. I think that the American public sees survivors and, we think of death as like the worst possible outcome, of course, but there's long, protracted physical and psychological battles that can be worse. People have lifelong physical, psychological damage from shootings. It affects productivity, it affects our GDP. It also makes makes the problem seem smaller than it is now. And kind of gives the impression that we've always had these, you know, four-plus wounded shootings, you know, why are we differentiating? I don't think that we actually have. I think a lot of gun violence in the past has been one-on-one shootings. I think there were probably more individual shootings with, uh, 22 caliber handguns, you know, throughout the '60s, '70s and '80s. And then as firearm technology has advanced, we are seeing more people shot per incident. And we did an analysis not long ago of ten years of mass shootings from Gun Violence Archive data -- and what we saw is that there's there's more victims per incident, and that's growing. And a lot of these, you know, so-called spray and pray shootings that we see in neighborhoods, outdoors, block parties in rural areas -- you know, this used to be a city problem. It's not anymore. Those, you know, 15 people shot is not counted as a mass shooting. That diminishes the size of this problem. And that has implications in a lot of... those implications bleed into a lot of different aspects of of our society. I could talk about this for hours, but it's not getting worse, I mean, it's not getting better. It's it's getting worse.
Devin: And like one of the trends obvious in Gun Violence Archive data is that like there's been more than 100% increase. There was 240 something, I think mass shootings back in 2014, and now you're getting 670 plus. And that's just over a decade-long period, and it's staggering. And one of the reasons that we at GVPedia use the Gun Violence Archive definition is that it allows you to break out mass shootings in a variety of categories. So if you want to focus on the mass killings, you can do that. If you want to focus on domestic violent shootings, you can do that, and you can really divide up the data how you want. And I think one of the more common resistances to using the Gun Violence Archive, particularly from people on the pro-gun side, is that it really reveals how they want to pick and choose what to care about. Because they'd just rather say, "Oh, that's a mass shooting," rather than, Oh, it's a mass killing with a firearm that wasn't in a private residence, that didn't involve gangs or drugs or any of these other things that we don't want to care about. It's only this one very specific thing. And if you force somebody to go through all the well, actually here's the ones I want to talk about, it reveals just how callous it is to exclude all those other categories.
Jennifer Mascia: I call that divvying up the demographics, because if you can convince the American public that something's only happening to a small group of people, you can convince them not to care. And if they don't care, they won't advocate for stronger gun laws. And stronger gun laws would slow the pace of production and sales. And that really is what's underpinning all of this. You know, this is a product. This is a business. Anything that slows the business, displeases the lobby, it displeases the people who are interested in it. And, you know, the activists are the mouthpiece for that movement. So, you know, "Oh, it's just happening to gangs. Don't worry about that." Meanwhile, bullets don't have names on them. Um, you know, you can aim for one person and and hit someone who is not also a person of color. Not that it should matter. You know, we're all Americans living in this country. But If they can convince you this isn't going to happen to you, you know, you're less likely to feel like you have skin in the game, and you're less likely to open your mouth about it.
Devin: Like even with gang shootings, that's treated as like a throw away. It's like, Oh, we shouldn't care about those. Like, you'll have the victims of those things, like be like a five-year old who is passing by or something, and it's just lumped in as gang violence. That's obviously meant to invoke this image of like, oh, two rival gangs duking it out in the streets, which is almost never what's actually happening. And it just provides a misleading sense of what gun violence looks like, I feel.
Jennifer Mascia: Also, these are happening in public spaces, you know and that that's a public safety risk for everybody.
Devin: Yeah. So a couple of the other more common criticisms that I often encounter with the Gun Violence Archive's definition of four or more shot is that, "Oh, all the Gun Violence Archive is trying to do is get the number up to scare people about guns." And that, uh, like the four or more shot doesn't include or includes a lot of incidents that most people tend not to think of as a mass shooting. Um, can you respond to both of these sort of criticisms that often come up that?
Jennifer Mascia: Oh yeah. So that that Gun Violence Archive is overstating mass shootings because they count injured people and they count domestic violence? I mean, it's divvying up the demographics. So yeah, one thing you notice from the activist trolls is that, you know, don't you know that Mark, Brian and [his] Gun Violence Archive is overstating this problem, that it's hysterics, that it's people who are grazed, that it's -- never mind that being grazed by a bullet is very traumatic. Don't count suicides. Don't count somebody who killed their own family. It's only a risk if you're in a public place and completely innocent. And that's a big problem. If you're married to an abuser who murders you and your children -- do you also assume some of the guilt because you married him and didn't wander into a supermarket and get killed? It's yet another way of discounting people who are affected by this problem, making it seem smaller than they are, or than it is, right? Because if we focus just on the shootings that take people by surprise, you know, that's that's nothing you can prepare for, that's that's nothing you can foresee. That's scary. People go out and buy guns because of that. You know, these incidents also generate gun sales. But, um, there is kind of like the guilt by association, that they tar victims of domestic shootings with and victims of, if you happen to live in a black neighborhood. "Well, what did you expect?" Um, so it's yet another way of whittling down the definition. And it's remarkably successful for a lot of people. I've seen some statistics and some racist arguments I had to look up because they were so old and so antiquated. It was like they were from 1900. I can't believe people argue these things. But the story is cutting through all of the myth and all of the bullshit. This problem is accelerating at every level. Individual shootings, multi-casualty shootings, at every level it's getting bigger. It's going to come to a point where they're not going to be able to spread their patina of bullshit on these numbers, and it makes me laugh because for years people didn't demonize Gun Violence. Archive. Only recently, as the mass shooting problem has gone from 200 something a year, which is bad enough to over 600 that they're starting to take aim. And when you see activists taking aim at things that are emotionless, data is emotionless. It's somebody going through, calling police precincts, and looking at the news. You can't really blame George Soros for your local news outlet reporting a shooting. They're injecting this political motivation. They're projecting. And just like they were projecting that CDC studies will increase support for gun control, they were already leaping over, "Well, if it concludes that guns are dangerous, that's going to increase support for gun control. So we're just going to kill the whole thing in the crib." It's kind of the same thing. That's what they're what they're doing. It's all the firehose of falsehood -- as a prophet said once.
Devin: Yeah. So, where do you see the media going with the definition? Because like it clearly does matter. And there's like on the government side, there's definitely a motive, like a financial motive to limit mass shootings to the four or more killed, so that way you don't have to pay out to survivors if it wasn't a mass shooting under this definition. But where's the overall media? Because I've seen, like the nightly news mentioned the Gun Violence Archive number for mass shootings, and then you'll have other outlets that use the four or more killed mass murder definition instead. So have you seen any trends?
Jennifer Mascia: On this, most outlets use Gun Violence Archive. Local outlets, national outlets, legacy. In the last few years, some news organizations have gone ahead and constructed their own databases of certain types of shootings: school shootings, public shootings. And it's a specialized definition. I've seen more legacy outlets quote them. So USA Today, Washington Post. They use the narrower definition. And that's been, I mean, I understand they're creating their own data sets, so they're doing an in-house. It's better for media outlets, they feel, to work off their own in-house data. But they've defined the problem as such that it's after years of quoting Gun Violence Archive, now they're kind of narrowing it again. Most people still quote Gun Violence Archive, but it has been a little disappointing to see the definition narrow. I respect news organizations that want to compile their own data, but compile the data with all all types of mass shootings. And as I say it, as it's coming out, I'm realizing we have so many that that's a labor intensive prospect. Maybe Washington Post and USA Today can't devote ten staffers to compiling every detail about every mass shooting. Again, the problem is not, you know, the gun violence, the the problem is that there's so much of it. The problem is not the media organization, you know, they're not doing this because they're assholes. It's that we have so many shootings, we can only focus on a few.
Devin: Yeah, yeah. And it's also like been, while more media organizations are siting Gun Violence Archive, there is the trend in terms of the breaking coverage that you mentioned, where if I get half a dozen or even like reaching double digits -- like with the Lewiston, Maine shooting -- like that was main news for what, like a week? And then it was gone. Whereas like in any other country, that would be a years-long trauma and focus. And now it's like even when you reach double digits dead it's over and done with within a week or two because it seems to be normal.
Jennifer Mascia: And that's the problem with this problem. The worse it gets, the number we get. The worse it gets, the more we have to pick and choose what what we're going to cover. I mean, Columbine stayed the news for months and months and months and months, and it wasn't the first school shooting, it wasn't even the first school shooting in the '90s or the late '90s. It was, you know, the worst. But every news organization camped out in Colorado for a long time. And you're right, now, you know, there are local media outlets, certainly, you know, who are going to publish in-depth reporting on it, but everyone else has moved on. There's no national reckoning about what happened in Lewiston. Why? Because there's going to be another one that bad in a month or two. This is so cheerful.
Devin: Yes, yes.
Jennifer Mascia: Look, this is not the America any of us thought we were going to grow up in, right? In '99, if you had told us this problem would be this bad, I mean, I don't even think the gun rights folks would believe you.
Caitlin: The interesting thing to me about like the mass shooting that we had in Maine in the fall is not only obviously it's about the victims, right? Those who are killed and those who are injured and their families and the carnage that's left behind. But it also opens the door to have conversations about other sorts of myths and disinformation that follows gun violence, like in those in those instances. This man walks into two public spaces, and where are the good guys with the guns? But those only become the story. If somebody wants to pick it up; and as you're saying, someone's only going to pick it up if somebody is going to read it or watch it. And it is scary to think about that. Maybe what's most important here to make something memorable is simply the the number of folks who end up dead and buried after this, and not the other impacts that these shootings have in our communities.
Jennifer Mascia: From a media perspective, if if there's a low fatality count, there's got to be something else that keeps it in the news -- a hate crime, if it happened in a in a government facility, God forbid, a Capitol or something, you know. There has to be something else that takes it to a level. Look, why do we even have news, right? You know, uh, we have news to notify people of, you know, what's happening and what could be a danger to us. The media deems something not a threat to public safety if it doesn't involve the general public. So that decision is being made consciously, or I think most of it is subconscious on a daily basis in like every newsroom.
Caitlin: Do you think when it comes to mass shootings at schools, these incidents used to hold media attention, even though there's far fewer of them than suicides, let's say. They used to hold media attention for quite a long time. But given the number that there are or how frequently they occur, do you think that that's opened the door for the media just to say, all right, we're going to cover it quickly and then keep it moving. So not even, you know, Sandy Hook, 20 first graders in the classroom getting slaughtered, like that isn't even necessarily as important to cover as it used to be.
Jennifer Mascia: On the national level, yes. And local news, different, you know, on a national level, yes. What local news is good at is staying with the ripple effects of a mass shooting. What it's bad at is covering community gun violence. They send reporters to parachute into a black and brown community where there's exploitative coverage. It's not always correct, and then they leave. And that can be extremely traumatic for the entire community, not just the people who survived or lost somebody. And with mass shootings, it's, you know, kind of the opposite, where it's like they're they're good at staying on the sustained, like, you know, this public shooting where people are thought to be blameless. They were just shopping, you know, they're good at tracking the ripple effects. We see this a lot with newspaper coverage. And national media, it's just there's so much competition like on CNN or, you know, even MSNBC for so many different stories, they really have to pick and choose. And the more it happens, the more it becomes normal. So we say, uh, four injured. We didn't have four injured shootings at this rate in 1993. The problem is accelerating. And unfortunately, that fact alone makes it harder to cover, in an ethical and sensitive way, but just in general.
Devin: I guess it's kind of surprising to me as well that like a 100% increase in mass shootings isn't more of a story that every news outlet would want to cover. Even though, like, I guess it's just so normal, but still, like, one would think that even the numbers alone on that would drive attention.
Jennifer Mascia: One would think. Um, one would definitely think. I always try to think about analogs to other things in our society. Like is there anything else, like, I guess, climate change, um, where people just get burned out as the problem gets worse; and the burnout contributes to the problem getting worse. And although unlike climate change, this is a wholly American phenomenon that's just a problem of our own making. But, um, you know, it's, yeah. Sandy Hook, the coverage hangover, because there was a bill,and there was there was coverage of that was like at least six months after the shooting. Uvalde. I mean, the police response, yes. But the the grief hangover that our country -- I didn't feel it as strongly because in that ten year span, it had accelerated to the point where it's just, it's sad. The bar is set higher and higher every time. And mass shooters know this. They're competing for legacy in their own set way.
Caitlin: We also, you know, we can state the obvious, which Sandy Hook is a suburb with a school filled with white kids, and Uvalde is not. And so that matters to the narrative and how many people are going to pay attention to it. [00:30:13][17.5]
Jennifer Mascia: It's really sad when the response or lack of response was still happening. I said to myself, it can't be possible, it's just me being cynical. But is it possible that they're not going in there because there's not 20 white children in there? And even if a community has, you know, a lot of people of color, they can still buy into that white supremacist paradigm where white lives matter more. And I am sad to say that in the year and a half since that shooting, that is a possibility.
Caitlin: Any other final thoughts you want to leave with us on mass shootings? Like you said, this is so cheery and a great way to start off 2024. So good job Devin. Thanks for this topic. We appreciate it.
Devin: Hey guys, starting off 2024 on, uh, some sort of note!
Jennifer Mascia: Doctor Doom over there. I do want to point out that mass shootings are the most visual manifestation of our gun violence problem, but they are less than 5% of shootings. So, you know, they're very scary, they're random, and they could happen anywhere. That is terrorism. However, that terrorism is happening on a micro level in communities across the country, and suicides. So I just want to remind people that this is the most covered aspect, but it's a tip of a huge iceberg. And let's not forget that. And most mass shootings are never covered. They involve people of color who are known to each other. And those completely go under-covered. Um, so we really do still have this problem of reinforcing white lives. Perceived innocent lives matter more. And, uh, yeah, this has been a commercial for Canada. It's a beautiful country. I mean, I feel we love America. We want a better America. We want a safer America. I was listening to your last podcast where you said, you know, you go to the games and people from Canada say, what's with all the security? We don't realize how this problem has changed every facet of American life. If you live in a place with a clear bag policy, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And we need to track these changes and bring them to everyone's attention, or it's just death by a thousand cuts.
Caitlin: Yeah, it was nothing I had thought about until those parents asked me, "Why are there so many people in uniform here?" And I just had never, it's just the normal, right? So it would be weird to me not to see university security, town security, to know that there's three, four, five, six, seven people, depending on the size of the event. It would be strange not to have that. It's completely the opposite.
Jennifer Mascia: And is this how we want to live? And I think younger people are waking up to this and saying, No, I don't want to live this way. We have people who are among the first generations to come of age with active shooter drills, from preschool to high school, and they're emerging from this like, this is no way to live. The second they get numb, that's when I'm going to get scared. As long as they're not numb, as long as they don't get complacent, we have hope.
Devin: To potentially ruin the breaking news story, like you were mentioning right before this podcast, do you have breaking news for us?
Jennifer Mascia: I do! About a minute before we went on, uh, a news alert. Wayne LaPierre has stepped down from the head of the National Rifle Association. So he's the most visible face and voice of the NRA that most Americans can remember. After catastrophic mass shootings in Columbine and Sandy Hook, he doubled down. The NRA could have gone another way, but he leaned into you need a gun to fight gun violence. And, uh, in recent years, he has been accused of using the NRA as a piggybank. So people who thought they were giving money to advocate for gun rights were really spending it on Wayne LaPierre's private jet travel, allegedly. And that trial is in jury selection. It's a civil case. The New York attorney general brought it, and it was about to start, and it could have removed him from the head of the organization and forced the NRA to get its financial house in order. And right ahead of that trial, he stepped down. Wayne has survived coup attempts in the past. When Oliver North was president of the NRA a few years ago, there was a division there, and Oliver North was the one to go. The top company brass stuck by Wayne. This is it appears to be one, uh, something he couldn't thwart. And we'll see what the reasons are, but he became a massive liability to the organization. Millions in legal fees. They're being investigated by a number of agencies for a number of things. The NRA is not going to be killed by this. And even if the NRA died tomorrow, the NRA has been successful. The NRA did a job. It did its job. It injected a belief into the American public that you need a gun to be safe. And it managed to get the Republican Party to absorb its entire platform. So even if the NRA dies, NRA-ism is here to stay. But it will be definitely a different NRA. It could be a streamlined NRA, and a lot of the members that it's lost went to other hardline groups, groups that are way to the right of the NRA. So the NRA may have been the iconic gun rights organization, and they like to call themselves the "oldest civil rights organization in the country." But, um, you know, they will definitely move forward in a dramatically different form. So this will be interesting to see.
Caitlin: By the time this goes live, that will hardly be breaking news. But still, for us, we feel very privileged.
Devin: A slightly more cheerful note.
Jennifer Mascia: Yeah, Canada -- it's for you.
Caitlin: Canada -- yea! And we know there are times in recent American history where the move to Canada and Canada tourism websites have crashed because so many of us have been actively looking to relocate there. So it's, uh, definite.
Jennifer Mascia: It could appen again, we don't know. November - it's a crapshoot.
Caitlin: Oh my goodness. Anyway, all right. Well as always, Jennifer, we thank you so much for taking your time to be here. We are excited to have you on again another time. Maybe we can talk about the number of guns that we have in this country. Or maybe there's something else that happens in current events that bubbles up, another topic that's important to cover. But we appreciate your expertise. And thank you so much for joining us here today.
Jennifer Mascia: Anytime! Thank you for having me.
Check out our previous podcast with Jennifer Mascia from August, 2023, here.
Image courtesy of Jennifer Mascia and CNN.