The stop the chicago violence initiative is looking to curb the muders of gang violence….

You are correct. To allay confusion, I should have written mass “murder” rather then “shootings”.

Obviously, violent events where multiple people are shot but not killed are more common. I’m assuming that you refer to this PDF report by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. But even at 20 events per year, in a population of 300 million, and in the context of over a million violent crime events per year (murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, and assault), mass shooting remains a very rare event.

The FBI defines “mass murder” as the killing of 4 or more persons in a single incident at a single or multiple near-by locations. These events are far rarer and the killing of 13 or more people has occurred only 11 times since 1949. It is these large scale killings (almost all involve attacks against random strangers in a public location) that are so rare and to which this article is obviously directed.

But, again. Thank you for your comment.

If that’s the case, why aren’t there shootings like this in Switzerland? Every household in Switzerland has an automatic rifle. If availability was the problem, Switzerland would be one of the most bullet ridden countries in the world, yet violence there is low.

Isn’t it obvious that the problem lies elsewhere?

How exactly would new gun laws remove the hundreds of millions of guns already in the country, anyway? Don’t you think someone willing to kill 30 people would also be willing to find a gun, even if it became difficult?