mass shooting

Mass shooting refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. The Congressional Research Service acknowledges that there is not a broadly accepted definition, and uses a definition of a "public mass shooting" if 4 or more people are actually killed, not including the perpetrator, echoing the FBI definition of the term "mass murder". Another unofficial definition of a mass shooting is an event involving the shooting (not necessarily resulting in death) of four or more people with no cooling off period. Related terms include school shooting and massacre. The lack of a single definition can lead to alarmism in the news media, with some reports conflating categories of crimes.