[xg15]

Absolutely. Even if there is some research question by which this criterion would be useful, it doesn't lead the underlying conclusions that school shootings in general are a rare event, declining in frequency.

Interestingly, according to [1], the criterion used by the FBI to assess mass shooting used to be "at least 4 persons killed or wounded" - until it got changed to "at least 3 persons" in 2013. So the criterion the study uses is stricter than both the old and the new way of counting the FBI uses.

Note also that, according to [2], even though the rate of mass shooting at schools seems to be decreasing, the rate of mass shootings in general is increasing.

See also [3] for more information about the different definitions and ways of counting.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting

[2] https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-200...

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/anothe...