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'Massacre' most commonly refers to individual events of deliberate and direct mass killing where the victims have no reasonable means of defense and pose no immediate physical threat to the assailants. If performed by members of the military or other government agents during a time of war, the action may qualify as a war crime. The deliberate mass killing of prisoners of war or civilians is often considered a massacre, however the term does not typically apply to the killing of armed combatants (except figuratively). Occasionally the term is also used to refer to the acts of a single individual rather than a group, such as the occasional labelling of school shootings as massacres.
In Guatemala, where massacres of Maya people were common during the Civil War, the Historical Clarification Commission agreed on a specific definition: "A massacre shall be considered the execution of five or more people, in the same place, as part of the same operation and whose victims were in an indefensible state." ^[1] In Colombia, the term is applied to the murder of at least half a dozen or more at one time.
The term "massacre" is sometimes used more widely to refer to individual, civil, or military mass killings where the deaths were not intentional, or the force used was excessive in comparison to a real or perceived threat. Examples include the Boston Massacre and the Kent State Massacre. Often, the application of the term to such killings has distinct political significance in shaping subsequent events, and the term is often used for propagandistic purposes.

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References

1. Humberto Sequeira, Chapter 9 : The Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification: Database Representation,''MAKING THE CASE: Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis''

See also

★ List of massacres

External links

★ List of School Shootings