Mass murder stats
Some numbers on mass murders. Interesting.
Apparently, mass murdering psychopaths hate Mondays too.
Update: I misread the chart. See comments for explanation by Heartless Libertarian.
6 Responses to “Mass murder stats”
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February 20th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I think you’re reading the chart wrong. In the text, it says that guns are used in 88% of the mass killings.
What the chart shows is how many are killed, on average, by method of death. There, guns come in lowest, at 4.85 average dead per incident, behind arson at 8.5 or so and explosives at 86.
So guns are by far the most common, but they don’t kill as many people per attack. I’m guessing the explosives are extremely infrequent-I don’t remember any bombings with mass deaths exept the WTC in ’93 and Olympic Park in ’96, unless you count 9/11 as explosives-and the two I mentioned I don’t think either got up to 86 dead. So the numbers skew kind of easily.
Now, if Harris and Klebold’s bombs had worked, Columbine might have pushed that average up.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Oklahoma City — 161 deaths I think.
February 20th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
168 actually. Sorry, didn’t mean to nitpick. It’s just that I’m from Oklahoma.
February 20th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Oi. Yeah. How’d I miss that one?
Wonder which one Waco fell under, explosives or arson? I didn’t see any “massive .gov screwup” category.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Uhhh, just about any bombing resulting in a fatality would qualify as a mass killing under the conventional definition (3 or more killings at the same time, generally without individual motive for each killing).
February 21st, 2007 at 11:26 am
“Wonder which one Waco fell under, explosives or arson?” All three – the FBI probably shot at people emerging from the fire. Maybe it even edged into a 4th category (WMD), since it seems likely the CS gas, which is recommended only for outdoors use, reached fatal concentration in spots (besides being flammable).
Chris, there are plenty of bombings with 1 or even 0 fatalities. The Unabomber’s letter bombs were rarely fatal, they were just too small to do more than blow off hands and blind people unless the surroundings helped concentrate the blast. Organized crime hitmen frequently attempt assassination by car bombing, and generally try to pick a time when the target will be driving alone, and size the bomb so it’s unlikely to kill anyone out of the car. But if you really want to kill a lot of people at once, the only thing that beats a big bomb in a crowded place is a nuke.