Several people were reportedly killed in a shooting at the Milwaukee campus of Molson Coors Beverage Company on February 26. According to initial reports, seven people were killed, including the shooter, making it one of the worst shootings in Wisconsin history. This isn’t the first mass shooting at a U.S. beer company: On August 3, 2010, a recently fired employee at a beer distributor in Manchester, Connecticut, shot and killed eight of his co-workers and wounded two others before taking his own life. Here’s the big picture on mass shootings in America, and how they fit into our country’s epidemic of gun violence. Tragedy and spectacle: There is no official definition of “mass shooting,” though it is often understood as an incident in a public place that claims four or more lives, and attracts widespread media coverage. In the last five decades, these events have become far more common. Other groups, like Gun Violence Archive, use a much broader definition for what counts as a mass shooting, sweeping in incidents that happen in homes, and where there are four or more casualties — not just deaths.
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