On Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:43:04 -0700, Paul Okami writes: > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/nyregion/04hostage.html?hp > >I'm well aware of the impact of the availability heuristic and mass media >portrayals on people's beliefs about the incidence of various crimes (e.g., >child kidnappings and such). That said, is it just my imagination or has >there >*really been* a substantial and scary increase in the number of deranged >individuals opening fire on groups of innocent people over the past two or >three decades? (I'm excluding war-time atrocities here).
The simple asnwer to your question appears to be "No". I assume that you're referring to "mass murders" in contrast to serial murderers (i.e., the murderer kills more than 4 people in a limited period of time). There probably is good data on this but I haven't been able to find it (I haven't been looking long, though). There is an interesting passage on mass murder in Elliot Leyton's "Hunting Humans" which is available on books.google.com at: http://books.google.com/books?id=nhARuP0vLgMC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&dq=%22mass+murder%22+frequency+fbi&source=bl&ots=d21KQ6PHCI&sig=rdy9tpg1_zXji5UKhBAPll0D8XY&hl=en&ei=_5PWSeTmLoTWlQfw-5ndDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 or http://tinyurl.com/c3lejc An interesting comment made by Leyton is that mass murderers have not been analyzed much by the FBI (it's "not a police problem") and there's no evidence that there has been an increase in recent years. Between 1976 and 1989, there was an average of 2 mass murders every month in the U.S. Again, there may be more recent data. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
