Editing Mass killing (section)

== Terminology ==
Several different terms are used to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants,{{sfn|Stone|2008|p=2}} but there is no consensus or generally-accepted terminology.{{sfn|Krain|1997|pp=331–332|ps=: "The literatures on state-sponsored mass murder and state terrorism have been plagued by definitional problems."}}{{sfn|Valentino|2004|p=6|ps=: "No generally accepted terminology exists to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants."}}{{sfn|Weiss-Wendt|2008|p=42|ps=: "There is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe.<!-- Considering that scholars have always put stress on prevention of genocide, comparative genocide studies have been a failure. Paradoxically, nobody has attempted so far to assess the field of comparative genocide studies as a whole. This is one of the reasons why those who define themselves as genocide scholars have not been able to detect the situation of crisis. -->"}}{{sfn|Verdeja|2012|p=307|ps=:<!-- "This new generation of scholarship has crystallized into the interdisciplinary field of 'genocide studies,' a community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to researching and preventing genocide. However, genocide studies has emerged as its own research field, developing in parallel rather than in conversation with work on other areas of political violence. Aside from a few important exceptions, mainstream political scientists rarely engage with the most recent work on comparative genocide. Some of the newest genocide research appears in topic-specific conferences and journals like 'Genocide Studies and Prevention' and the 'Journal of Genocide Research', but not in political science venues. The reasons for this separation are complex, but partly stem from the field's roots in the humanities (especially history) and reliance on methodological approaches that have had little resonance in mainstream political science, as well as the field's explicit commitment to humanitarian activism and praxis. Earlier generations of political scientists and sociologists who studied genocide often found little interest for their work among dominant political science journals and book publishers; they instead opted to establish their own journals and professional organizations. --> "Although the field has grown enormously over the past decade and a half, genocide scholarship still rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journals."}} ''Mass killing'' has emerged as a "more straightforward" term than ''genocide'' or ''politicide''.{{sfn|Ott|2011|p=53|ps=: "As is customary in the literature on mass killing of civilians there is a need to restate here what mass killing is about. Although many definitions have been used — 'genocide', 'politicide' and 'democide' — there has emerged a sort of consensus that the term 'mass killing' is much more straightforward than either genocide or politicide.<!-- Harff (2003) makes a clear distinction from genocide, often used interchangeably with mass killing, by emphasizing the intention of the perpetrator. He posits: 'genocide as an authority group's sustained purposeful implementation or facilitation of policies designed to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group' (Harff, 2003, p. 58). Although this definition encompasses the ethnic population, the emphasis here is on the objective function of the authority, which is the destruction in whole or part of the intended group. The second definition, politicide, limits the annihilation to a specific group. Politicide pertains when the victimized group is identified by its political opposition to the dominant party, rather than other communal characteristics (Harff, 2003, p. 58). Rummel (1995) advanced the democide label. It is defined as the 'murder of any person or people by a government including genocide, politicide and mass murder' (p. 3). -->"}} Mass killing was proposed by [[genocide scholars]] in attempts to collect a uniform global database of genocidal events and identify statistical models for prediction of onset of mass killings. Atsushi Tago and Frank Wayman reference mass killing as defined by Valentino and state that even with a lower threshold (10,000 killed per year, 1,000 killed per year, or even 1), "autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide."{{sfn|Tago|Wayman|2010}} Other terms used by several authors to describe mass killings of non-combattents include:
* [[Classicide]] – "intended mass killing of entire social classes",{{sfn|Mann|2005|p=17}} which sociologist [[Michael Mann (sociologist)|Michael Mann]] considers more apt than ''genocide'' for describing killings with the intent of suppression of the [[bourgeoisie]] in [[communist state]]s.{{sfn|Sémelin 2007|p=37}}
* [[Gendercide]] – the systematic killing of members of a specific [[gender]]. <ref>{{Cite journal |last=La Puma |first=John |date=1987-05-01 |title=Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1987.03390170118043 |journal=JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association |volume=257 |issue=17 |pages=2362 |doi=10.1001/jama.1987.03390170118043 |issn=0098-7484}}</ref>
* [[Democide]] – political scientist [[Rudolph Rummel]] defined democide as "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command";{{sfn|Harff|2017}} according to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, killings by unofficial private groups, extrajudicial summary killings and mass deaths in deliberate famines as well as killings by ''de facto'' governments, e.g. civil war killings.{{sfn|Harff|1996}} Rummel's democide concept is similar to geno-politicide, but there are two important differences. First, an important prerequisite for geno-politicide is government's intent to destroy a specific group.{{sfn|Harff|2003}} In contrast, democide deals with wider range of cases, including the cases when governments are engaged in random killing either directly or due to the acts of criminal omission and neglect.{{sfn|Harff|2017}} Second, whereas some lower threshold exists for a killing event to be considered geno-politicide, there is no low threshold for democide which covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.{{sfn|Harff|2017}}
* [[Genocide]] – under the [[Genocide Convention]], the [[crime of genocide]] generally applies to mass murder of [[ethnic]] rather than [[Political group|political]] or [[social group]]s.{{sfn|Curthoys|Docker|2008|p=7}} Protection of political groups was eliminated from the [[United Nations]] resolution after a second vote because many states anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.{{sfnm|1a1=Schaak|1y=1997|2a1=Schabas|2y=2009|2p=160|3a1=Jones|3y=2010|3p=137}} ''Genocide'' is also a popular term for political killings which are studied academically as democide and politicide.{{sfn|Tago|Wayman|2010}}
* Mass killing – referencing earlier definitions,{{refn|{{harvnb|Charny|2000}} defines generic genocide as "the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims." In the 2006 article "Development, Democracy, and Mass Killings", William Easterly, Roberta Gatti, and Sergio Kurlat adopted Charny's definition of generic genocide for their use of ''mass killing'' and ''massacre'' to avoid the politics of ''genocide'' altogether.{{sfn|Easterly|Gatti|Kurlat|2006}}|group=nb}} Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli, and Dominic Rohner define mass killings as "the killings of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under the conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."{{sfn|Esteban|Morelli|Rohner|2010}} Valentino defines the term as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants",{{sfn|Valentino|2004|p=91}} where a "massive number" is at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less;{{sfn|Bach-Lindsday|Huth|Valentino|2004|p=387}} this is the most accepted quantitative minimum threshold for the term.{{sfn|Esteban|Morelli|Rohner|2010}}{{sfn|Tago|Wayman|2010|pp=4, 11–12}}<!-- "Our term, 'mass killing,' is used by Valentino (2004: 10), who aptly defines it as 'the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants.' The word 'noncombatants' distinguishes mass killing from battle-deaths in war, which occur as combatants fight against each other. The 'massive number' he selects as the threshold to mass killing is 'at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years' (Valentino, 2004: 11-12), which of course averages to at least 10,000 killed per year. [p. 4] ... [p. 11] One reason for selecting these thresholds of 10,000 and 1,000 deaths per year is that we find that in the Harff data on geno-politicide, which are one of our key datasets, there are many cases of over 10,000 killed per year, but also some in which between 1,000 and 10,000 are killed per year. Therefore, analyzing at a 1,000-death threshold (as well as the 10,000 threshold) insures the inclusion of all the Harff cases. Valentino chooses 50,000 over five years as 'to some extent arbitrary', but a 'relatively high threshold' to create high confidence that mass killing did occur and was deliberate, 'given the generally poor quality of the data available on civilian fatalities' (Valentino, 2004: 12). We believe that our similar results, when we lower the threshold to 1,000 killed per year, are an indication that the data in Harff and in Rummel remain reliable down even one power of ten below Valentino's 'relatively high' selected threshold, and we hope that, in that sense, our results can be seen as a friendly amendment to his work, and that they basically lend confidence, based on empirical statistical backing, for the conceptual direction which he elected to take. [p. 12] Within that constant research design, we then showed that the differences were not due to threshold either (over 10,000 killed per year; over 1,000; or over 1). The only remaining difference is the measure of mass killing itself — democide vs. geno-politicide." -->
* [[Politicide]] – some genocide scholars propose the concept of politicide to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.{{sfn|Gurr|Harff|1988}} [[Barbara Harff]] studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened as geno-politicide, to include the mass killing of political, economic, ethnic, and cultural groups.{{sfn|Tago|Wayman|2010}}

In the United States, the [[Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act]] of 2012, passed in the aftermath of the [[Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting]] in [[Newtown, Connecticut]], clarified the statutory authority for federal law enforcement agencies to provide investigatory assistance to the States, and mandated across federal agencies, including the Departments of [[United States Department of Justice|Justice]] and [[United States Department of Homeland Security|Homeland Security]], a definition of "mass killing" as three or more killings during an incident, while making no reference to the choice of weapon.<ref name=crs>{{cite report |last1=Krouse |first1=William J. |last2=Richardson |first2=Daniel J. |title=Mass Murder with Firearms: Incidents and Victims, 1999–2013| url=https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44126.pdf |publisher=[[Congressional Research Service]] |date=July 30, 2015 |page=26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150806001033/https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44126.pdf |archive-date=August 6, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=injuryepidemiology>{{cite journal  |last1=Booty |first1=Marisa |last2=O'Dwyer |first2=Jayne |last3=Webster |first3=Daniel |first4=Alex |last4=McCourt |first5=Cassandra |last5=Crifasi |title=Describing a "mass shooting": the role of databases in understanding burden |journal=Injury Epidemiology |volume=6 |issue=47 |year=2019 |page=47 |doi=10.1186/s40621-019-0226-7 |pmid=31828004 |pmc=6889601 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name=wapo>{{cite news |first=Michelle |last=Ye Hee Lee |authorlink=Michelle Ye Hee Lee |date=December 3, 2015 |title=Obama's inconsistent claim on the 'frequency' of mass shootings in the U.S. compared to other countries |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/12/03/obamas-inconsistent-claim-on-the-frequency-of-mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-compared-to-other-countries/ |access-date=April 9, 2021 |archive-date=March 5, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305235633/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/12/03/obamas-inconsistent-claim-on-the-frequency-of-mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-compared-to-other-countries/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=ajc>{{cite news |title=Spa killings another grisly chapter in Georgia history |newspaper=[[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]] |url=https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/spa-killings-another-grisly-chapter-in-georgia-history/JRDTBRUE4JDZ5GLU77I2LDSZNE/ |first=Mandi |last=Albright |date=March 17, 2021}}</ref>