What Counts as a Mass Shooting? Why So Much of America’s Gun Violence Gets Overlooked – By Josiah Bates (TIME) / Mar 30 2021
In the past two weeks, two horrific mass shootings have made national news across the United States.
On March 22, a gunman killed 10 people at a Boulder, Colo. grocery store, including a police officer responding to the scene. A 21-year-old man has since been charged with ten counts of murder, after surrendering to police at the scene.
Just six days earlier, on March 16, a mass shooting occurred at three spas and massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. A 21-year-old man has since been charged with eight counts of murder, having been arrested after a police chase. Of the eight people killed, six have been identified as Asian and Asian-American women; the incident has been widely viewed targeted attack against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, at a time when violence and racism against the AAPI community in the country has been on a marked rise.
Both in this moment and moving forward, we must be more conscious of our country’s selective reaction to gun violence—and how coverage of gun crime is produced and viewed through a majority white-led media industry. It remains of the utmost importance to hear and to learn from AAPI communities, uplifting their voices and championing their calls to action to end anti-Asian violence and discrimination as it relates to gun violence, and any violence. Alongside this, it’s also crucial to define what exactly a mass shooting is—and to acknowledge the racialized blind spots we have in applying the term, which is actually not borne of a clear concrete or “literal” definition.
CONTINUE > https://time.com/5947893/what-constitutes-a-mass-shooting/
