Mass murder is the act of killing a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in proximity. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more persons kill several others.
Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
A lone wolf attack, or lone actor attack, is a particular kind of mass murder, committed in a public setting by an individual who plans and commits the act on their own. In the United States, such attacks are usually committed with firearms. In other countries, knives are sometimes used to commit mass stabbings. Although definitions vary, most databases require a minimum of four victims for the event to be considered a mass murder.
Walter Ze'ev Laqueur was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence.
A murder–suicide is an act where an individual kills one or more people before or while killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms:
Walid Phares is a Lebanese-born American scholar and conservative political pundit.
John G. Horgan is a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He studies involvement and engagement with terrorism, with a focus on disengagement and deradicalisation from terrorist movements. He has been described by the European Eye on Radicalization research group as the "world’s most distinguished expert in the psychology of terrorism". Since 2019, Horgan has been leading a team of researchers funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to research the incel subculture.
Gun violence is a term of political, economic and sociological interest referring to the tens of thousands of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries occurring in the United States. In 2022, up to 100 daily fatalities and hundreds of daily injuries were attributable to American gun violence. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reported 38,390 deaths by firearm, of which 24,432 were suicides. The national rate of firearm deaths rose from 10.3 people for every 100,000 in 1999 to 11.9 people per 100,000 in 2018, equating to over 109 daily deaths. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm. In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm.
Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a firearm. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, and suicide, or attempted suicide, depending on jurisdiction. Non-criminal violence includes accidental or unintentional injury and death. Also generally included in gun violence statistics are military or para-military activities.
Bruce R. Hoffman is an American political analyst. He specializes in the study of terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, and counter-insurgency. Hoffman serves as the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, where he directs its Center for Jewish Civilization. In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews, and is the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy and former dean at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Fox holds a bachelor's degree in sociology (1972), a master's degree in criminology (1974), a master's degree in statistics (1975), and a Ph.D. in sociology (1976), all from the University of Pennsylvania.
A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers kill or injure multiple individuals simultaneously using a firearm. There is no widely accepted definition of "mass shooting" and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, familicides and terrorism. The perpetrator of an ongoing mass shooting may be referred to as an active shooter.
The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, popularly known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, was a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as large capacity.
Since their inception in the 1970s, video games have often been criticized by some for violent content. Politicians, parents, and other activists have claimed that violence in video games can be tied to violent behavior, particularly in children, and have sought ways to regulate the sale of video games. Studies have shown no connection between video games and violent behavior. The American Psychological Association states that while there is a well-established link between violent video games and aggressive behaviors, empirical research finds there is little to no evidence connecting violent behavior to video games.
Eugene Roy Fidell is an American lawyer specializing in military law. He is currently the Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.
Christopher J. Ferguson is an American psychologist who serves as a professor and co-chair of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. He previously served as an associate professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. In 2014, he was named a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Ferguson is also a published author who has written both fiction and nonfiction.
Domestic terrorism or homegrown terrorism is a form of terrorism in which victims "within a country are targeted by a perpetrator with the same citizenship" as the victims. There are many definitions of terrorism, and none of them are universally accepted.
Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims. Using this definition, a 2016 study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States, In 2017 The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4011 mass shootings in the US, most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-violence, social-violence, and domestic violence-related. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia, followed by Louisiana and Illinois.
Roy Godson is an academic and scholar within the fields of international politics and national security, and a professor emeritus at Georgetown University.
A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock 'n' Roll is a non-fiction book about sexual morality, Catholicism and religion in the United States written by Mark Judge. Prior to research on the work, Judge's background in Catholicism included education at Catholic schools Georgetown Preparatory School and Catholic University of America. Judge's previous books, including Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk and God and Man at Georgetown Prep chronicled his time at Catholic school.
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