Mass Shootings

Vocabulary

Video: Mass Shootings

Transcript

Back in the 1980s, there were eight mass shootings, that is when three or more people are killed by a gunman.

The worse was a shooting at a California McDonald’s, with twenty-two (22) casualties.

And despite an assault weapons ban in 1994, mass shootings occurred twenty-three (23) times in the nineties (90s), costing 159 lives.

A school massacre in Columbine High School, Colorado, prompted this response from then president Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton, US President: “Perhaps now, America would wake up to the dimensions of this challenge. If it could happen in a place like Littleton, and we could prevent anything like this from happening, again.”

In the 2000s, twenty incidents cost 171 lives. At Virginia Tech University, a gunman killed thirty-two people in what was then the worse shooting in modern history.

George W. Bush, US President: “Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom, and every American community.”

The rate of mass shootings has only increased in the years since 2010. Twenty-eight people died when a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Forty-nine people were killed in a nightclub in Orlando, the thirty-third mass shooting during Barrack Obama’s presidency.

Barrack Obama, US President: “This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that shoot people in a school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub.

And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be.”

The Las Vegas Shooting with fifty-eight confirmed dead marks the fortieth mass shooting since 2010, and brings the total number of victims in the past seven years to 350.

Out of a total of 91 mass shootings, a woman was involved in only three of them. And in almost six out of ten cases, the gunman was White. In three-quarter of the cases, the gun was purchased legally.

Donald Trump: US President: “We cannot fathom their pain, we cannot imagine their loss. To the families of the victims, we are praying for you, and we are here for you.”

Questions

1. The number of mass shootings and victims have been increasing. True or false?

2. Did a ban on assault rifles have a major impact on reducing mass shootings?

3. Mass shootings take place in poor neighborhoods. Is this entirely correct, mostly true, sometimes, rarely or never. What are some “typical” or “common” places that mass shootings have taken place?

4. US presidents have given press conferences or statements after mass shootings. Is this right or wrong? What was their tone like?

5. What was Barack Obama’s message?

6. What are the demographics of mass shooters?

7. Can mass shootings occur anywhere, in any community?

A. Have you noticed an increase in mass shootings or terrorism?

B. What might happen in the future?

C. Why are there mass killings? What is the cause of mass killings?

D. What is the solution? How can mass killings be prevented?

E. Have you heard the term schadenfreude? How might this apply to people and the media?