Editing Mass murder (section)

==Criticism as an analytical category==
Commentators have pointed out that there are a wide variety of ways that homicides with more than several victims might be classified. Such incidents can be, and have been even in recent decades, classified many different ways including "as a ''mass shooting''; as a ''school shooting''; as ''mass murder''; as ''workplace violence''...; as ''a crime involving an assault rifle''; as ''a case of a mentally ill person committing acts of violence''; and so on."<ref name="best20130616">
{{cite news|last=Best|first=Joel|date=June 16, 2013|title=How Should We Classify the Sandy Hook Killings?: The social construction of a mass shooting epidemic|newspaper=Reason|url=http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/16/the-politics-of-gun-violence|access-date=June 18, 2013|quote=''it is possible to characterize Newtown as an instance of a lot of different social problems: as a mass shooting; as a school shooting; as mass murder; as workplace violence (remember the staff members who were killed were at work); as a crime involving an assault rifle; as a case of a mentally ill person committing acts of violence; and so on.  We expect journalists to have a sort of sociological imagination, to help us understand incidents as instances.  And we can understand why advocates for gun control, mental health, or other causes might favor particular labels but we need to appreciate there is no ''One True Classification,'' that the categories we use are merely tools that may help us better understand what [is] happening in our society.''}}</ref>

How such rarely occurring incidents of homicide are classified tends to change significantly with time. "In the 1960s and 1970s,... it was understood that the key feature of [a number of such] cases was a high body count. These early discussions of mass murder lumped together [a variety of] cases that varied along what would come to be seen as important dimensions:
* Time: Did the killings occur more or less simultaneously, or did they extend over several days, months, or years?
* Place: Did the killings occur in a single location, or in a variety of places?
* Method: How were the victims killed?"<ref name=best20130616/>
In the late decades of the 20th century and early years of the 2000s, the most popular classifications moved to include method, time and place.

While such classifications may assist in gaining human meaning, as human-selected categories, they can also carry significant meaning and reflect a particular point of view of the commentator who assigned the descriptor.<ref name=best20130616/>