Back in November, one of the Homeland Security's intelligence analysis centers in New Jersey was tasked with finding "commonalities" of mass shootings in the United States.
Today, the website Public Intelligence received an unclassified version of that report through a Freedom of Information Act request. The New Jersey "Fusion Center" looked at 29 mass shootings in the United States since 1999.
The findings:
-- Nearly half of the shootings happened at a workplace.
-- All but one of the shooters were male between the ages of 17 and 48.
-- All but one of the attacks were perpetrated by single shooters. The only exception were the "two students who conducted the shootings at Columbine."
-- Most of the "active shooters" committed suicide or were killed by responding officers.
-- Only four were former military.
-- Most used semiautomatic handguns.
This information may not surprise you. But what surprised the folks at Wired's Danger Room is what was missing from the report:
"One of the most striking patterns about U.S. mass killings is visible only through its absence. Terrorists aren't committing these crimes. Ordinary, unhinged American men are. That's despite an inability for federal law enforcement to track stockpiled firearms and literally years of al-Qaida sympathizers and propagandists urging disaffected U.S. Muslims to rise up against their neighbors."
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