Associated Press/Mike Stewart
- The US has had two mass public shootings within a week of each other.
- The last large-scale public shooting occurred a year ago before the pandemic took hold.
- Experts said the focus on the pandemic left little talk on mass shootings to inspire gunmen.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Less than a week before 10 people were killed when a shooter opened fire at a Colorado supermarket, eight people were killed at three Atlanta spas.
On Monday, an injured suspect was taken into custody after police said 10 people were killed, including a police officer, at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.
Last Tuesday, Robert Aaron Long, 21, allegedly killed four people at Young's Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia before heading to Gold Spa and the Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta, where another four people were killed.
Six of the eight victims were Asian women.
Prior to the shootings in Atlanta, the US hadn't seen a large-scale public mass shooting since March 2020, when a man killed four people at a gas station in Missouri, experts at The Violence Project, which tracks mass shootings told the Associated Press in December.
Experts said shootings like the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead in Parkland, Florida, or the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that killed at least 50 people and injured 200 more have been less common during the pandemic.
However, while public large-scale shootings significantly decreased during the pandemic, the Gun Violence Archive found that more private shootings, those defined as four or more people being shot by one person, actually significantly increased.
In 2020, there were 611 mass shootings, according to the archive. In the majority of those instances, the perpetrator knew the victims.
Criminologist James Alan Fox told the AP he was hopeful that the lull of mass public shootings during lockdowns would help get a handle on the mass shooting issue impacting the US.
Fox told the AP that with the pandemic, those who might have felt alone and likely to commit a mass crime may have felt less alone in dealing with hardship.
The AP reported that experts have suggested that the more we talk about mass killings, the more likely it is for a gunman to become interested in carrying one out.
Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Hamline University told The New York Times that it's likely the focus on the pandemic meant less talk of mass shootings to inspire gunmen.
"There had been a hope that maybe we broke the cycle and maybe we won't return," Peterson told the Times. "Now that it's back, a number of scholars are really concerned."
