Mass shootings are a perennial crisis in the U.S., unmatched in numbers anywhere else in the world—and it’s a problem that may grow worse over time without addressing underlying issues, according to a new study unveiled on Sunday.
In “Mass Shooters, Firearms, and Social Strains: A Global Analysis of an Exceptionally American Problem,” presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago, criminal justice professor Adam Lankford analyzed mass shootings around the world from 1966 to 2012 and found that the phenomenon is “a bigger problem today than it was a decade ago and it may be a bigger problem in the future.”