Gun Control & RKBA

1.) Gang related shootings are still shootings that involve guns. If one is talking about gun violence, then it makes sense to also talk about gun violence perpetrated by gangs. (And in the context of my OP, the right wing is talking about blaming Obama for, among other things, inner city violence, which is mostly gang violence anyway. Thus, including gang violence in the conversation is appropriate even under the rules laid out by the rw-ers).

Furthermore, whenever we talk about the 10000 or so gun homicides per year, we are including gang violence, so it would seem appropriate to include such gang shootings in our numbers of mass shootings.


2.) Why differentiate terrorism? Pulse and San Bernardino involved legally-obtained weapons like many other non-terroristic attacks, and thus those attacks certainly should be included in any list of mass shootings. Anyway, since terrorism is so rare here, it really doesn't matter whether we include Pulse or San Bernardino, since they are a drop in the bucket in relation to gang shootings and other non-terroristic shootings.


You point out that the FBI doesn't count gang activity in mass murder stats. Do you have an argument as to why that should be extended to the general field of gun violence or "mass shootings"?

I realize that in the context of gun-control laws, gang violence is a somewhat separate issue since they don't generally subject themselves to background checks. However, if we are interested in measuring the level of gun violence in our society, why not include them?