Article updated: 12/16/2012 8:33 AM

No rise in mass killings, but their impact is huge

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Law enforcement personnel work Tuesday at the scene of a shooting at the Clackamas Town Center mall in Clackamas, Ore. A gunman killed two people and wounded a third amid a holiday crowd estimated at 10,000 people.

Associated Press

Judy Goos, left, hugs her daughter's friend, Isaiah Bow, 20, an eyewitnesses, as Terrell Wallin, 20, right, looks on, outside Gateway High School where witnesses were brought for questioning after a gunman opened fire at the midnight premiere of the "Dark Knight Rises" movie in Aurora, Colo.

Associated Press/July 2012

A man wipes away tears outside a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. after a shooting. A white supremacist killed six worshippers and injured four other people before taking his own life.

Associated Press/August 2012

Smoke rises from a sniper's gun as he fires from the tower of the University of Texas administration building in Austin, Texas at people below. Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, says, "Mass shootings provoke instant debates about violence and guns and mental health and that's been the case since Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966." The engineering student and former Marine killed 13 people and an unborn child and wounded 32 others in the shooting.

Associated Press/August 1966

About this Article

In what has become sickeningly familiar, gunmen opened fire on innocents in what should be the safest of places — first, at a shopping mall in Oregon, and then, unthinkably, at an elementary school in Connecticut. Once again there were scenes of chaos as rescuers and media descended on the scene. As this year of the gun lurches to a close, leaving a bloody wake, we are left to wonder: What is the meaning of all this?