Oh bugger, here we go again.

The term "mass shooting" has been dishonestly re-defined to artificially inflate the rate and scare people, when the reality is that the overall violent crime rate has remained on a downward trend since 1981 in the US, as I believe @jacobtothe has already pointed out. What I mean is that, as violent crime (including gun crime) drops, the number of victims in a single event to categorise it as a "mass shooting" has also dropped. This is bog-standard statistical deception. As of 2013 per the FBI's criteria, the threshhold is 4 people being shot (not killed, simply shot; all four could survive and the event will still be called a "mass shooting" by the current definition), and the media reports on as many such events as possible in order to fearmonger with such headlines as "there have been more mass shootings than days in 2023". As much as I hate the idea of the government having a monopoly on the media, credit where credit is due, Russian state media such as RT doesn't do that... still, take everything they say with a pinch fistful of salt.

I wonder how many "mass shootings" were related to inner-city gang activity, which is usually committed with stolen guns by those who already have criminal records and are not allowed to own them under US law already (one of the demands I keep hearing is "universal background checks," which the US already does). Seriously, I have no idea, I'm left to wonder simply because of how many times "the shooter was known to law enforcement".