The Commercial Appeal
Active shooters are defined by the FBI as gunmen who arrive on the scene with the specific intent to commit mass murder. Unlike other mass killings or mass shootings, this sub-set does not include incidents such as bank robberies or drug deals that may turn lethal. According to the FBI, there is a disturbing rise in the number of “active shooter” incidents across America, like the Greenville attack. The FBI is basing its conclusion on data collected by a Texas State University researcher that was exclusively obtained by Scripps News. The data shows the number of active shooter events in the U.S. has tripled in recent years. “There is a higher number of people being shot and a higher number of people being killed,” said special agent Katherine Schweit, head of the FBI’s active shooter team which formed after last year’s rampage in Newtown. The Scripps review of the active shooter data found a total of 14 attacks this year, with gunmen shooting 73 people and killing 39. Four of those incidents resulted in shootings but no fatalities. “The characteristics that bind them together unfortunately is (the) shooter’s desire to kill” said Special Agent Schweit, and to kill “as many people and kill them as fast and freely as he may be able to ” she said in an exclusive interview with Scripps. The FBI’s new team does not yet keep its own statistics on active shootings but has turned to information collected by outside researchers, most notably those at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Dr. Peter Blair is an associate professor of criminal justice at Texas State and has been evaluating active shooter data which show an average of 5 incidents per year from 2000 to 2008. But from 2009 to the present the number rose to an average of 15 per year. Blair attributes much of the rise to events that might escape attention from other researchers.
