Mass Shooting in San Bernardino
December 3, 2015
On Thursday, authorities were attempting to sort out the details of a deadly mass shooting that had taken place in San Bernardino, California, the day before. Two heavily armed shooters killed 14 people and wounded nearly two dozen others during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for people with disabilities. The suspects were themselves killed in a gun battle with police hours after the rampage. The motives for the shooting have not yet been determined. However, authorities indicated that one of the shooters may have had previous contact with international terrorism suspects and may also have had work-related grievances.
The San Bernardino killings were the second mass shooting to take place in the United States on Wednesday and the sixth in a week, according to Mass Shooting Tracker. The group defines a “mass shooting” as the shooting of four or more people. Early Wednesday morning, a gunman shot four people, one fatally, in Savannah, Georgia. Wednesday’s massacre in San Bernardino was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting nearly three years ago. On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman killed 20 students—all 6 or 7 years old—and 6 adults at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut.
Thus far in 2015, by Mass Shooting Trackers’ definition, 355 mass shootings have occurred in the United States. According to the University of Alabama Department of Criminal Justice, the population of the United States comprises about 5 percent of the global population. Yet, from 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of all the mass shootings in the world occurred in the United States. Researchers at the university attributed the high percentage of mass shootings in the United States to the high number of civilian gun owners in the country.
Additional World Book articles:
- Columbine High School shooting
- Tucson shooting of 2011
- Aurora movie theater shooting of 2012
- Paris terrorist attacks of 2015
- “Routine” (a Behind the Headlines article)
- Charleston Church Shooting Called a Hate Crime (a Behind the Headlines article)