Mass shootings in the United States

For a more comprehensive list, see List of mass shootings in the United States.

Memorials for some of the deadliest mass shootings that occurred in the United States. Clockwise from top left: The 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and the 2019 El Paso shooting.

Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition.[1][2][3] One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims.

Using this definition, a 2016 study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 (90 of 292 incidents) occurred in the United States,[4][5] In 2017 The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years.[6] A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in the US, most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-violence, social-violence, and domestic violence-related. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings per one million people), followed by Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings per million) and Illinois.[7]

Perpetrator demographics vary by type of mass shooting, though in almost all cases they are male. Contributing factors include easy access to guns, perpetrator suicidality and early childhood trauma, as well as various sociocultural factors including online media reporting of mass shootings. In one study, 44% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing the act.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation designated 61 of all events in 2021 as active shooter incidents.[8] The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country.[4][9][10][11][12] After a shooting, perpetrators generally either commit suicide or are restrained or killed by law enforcement officers. Mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of gun deaths in the United States between 2000 and 2016,[13] and less than 0.5% of all homicides in the United States from 1976 to 2018.[14]

  1. ^ Borchers, Callum (October 4, 2017). "The squishy definition of 'mass shooting' complicates media coverage". Washington Post. Retrieved August 26, 2018. ...'mass shooting' is a term without a universally-accepted definition.
  2. ^ Bjelopera, Jerome (March 18, 2013). "Public Mass Shootings in the United States" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 9, 2013. Retrieved August 26, 2018. There is no broadly agreed-to, specific conceptualization of this issue, so this report uses its own definition for public mass shootings.
  3. ^ Greenberg, Jon; Jacobson, Louis; Valverde, Miriam (February 14, 2018). "What we know about mass shootings". PolitiFact. Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved February 20, 2018. As noted above, there is no widely accepted definition of mass shootings. People use either broad or restrictive definitions of mass shootings to reinforce their stance on gun control. After the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, Congress defined "mass killings" as three or more homicides in a single incident. The definition was intended to clarify when the U.S. Attorney General could assist state and local authorities in investigations of violent acts and shootings in places of public use.
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference CNN why was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Lankford, Adam (2016). "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries". Violence and Victims. 31 (2): 187–99. doi:10.1891/0886-6708.VV-D-15-00093. PMID 26822013. S2CID 207266615.
  6. ^ Fisher, Max; Keller, Josh (November 7, 2017). "Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 27, 2022.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference jama was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021 (Report). Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation/U.S. Department of Justice/Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training at Texas State University. 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  9. ^ Palazzolo, Joe; Flynn, Alexis (October 3, 2015). "U.S. Leads World in Mass Shootings". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  10. ^ Healy, Melissa (August 24, 2015). "Why the U.S. is No. 1 – in mass shootings". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  11. ^ Michaels, Samantha (August 23, 2015). "The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country". Mother Jones. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  12. ^ Fox, Kara (March 9, 2018). "How US gun culture compares with the world in five charts". CNN.
  13. ^ Wallace, Lacey (March 30, 2021). "Mass shootings are rare – firearm suicides are much more common, and kill more Americans". PBS NewsHour. WETA. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
  14. ^ Smart, Rosanna; Schell, Terry L. (April 15, 2021). "1. Mass Shootings in the United States". In Ramchand, Rajeev; Saunders, Jessica (eds.). Contemporary Issues in Gun Policy: Essays from the RAND Gun Policy in America Project (PDF) (Report). Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. pp. 1–25. Retrieved March 27, 2023.