There is absolutely an observed trend of copycat school shootings which flies in the face of randomness.
That said, I think this trend is hidden from this dataset because it relates specifically to mass shootings, including only those incidents in which the shooter took the lives of at least four people.
I would hypothesize that each major shooting is followed in the succeeding months by a number of slapdash copycat shootings, in many of which less than four people are killed by the shooter.
That said, I think this trend is hidden from this dataset because it relates specifically to mass shootings, including only those incidents in which the shooter took the lives of at least four people.
I would hypothesize that each major shooting is followed in the succeeding months by a number of slapdash copycat shootings, in many of which less than four people are killed by the shooter.