Deadliest Mass Shooting In U.S History
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Mass shooting There is a lack of consensus on how to define a mass shooting. Most terms define a minimum of three or four victims of gun violence (not including the shooter or in an inner city) in a short period of time, although an Australian study from 200 ...
s are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings,
domestic violence Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner ...
, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims. Using this definition, one 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. Using a similar definition, ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' records 163 mass shootings in the United States between 1967 and June 2019. ''Mother Jones'' records 133 mass shootings between 1982 and July 2022. ''The
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
'' records 59 mass shootings between 2006 and August 2022. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' records 90 mass shootings between 1966 and 2012. ''The Violence Project'' records 185 mass shootings from 1966 to December 2022. The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country. Shooters generally either die by suicide afterward, or are restrained or killed by
law enforcement officer A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a Public sector, public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the Law enforcement, enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialist ...
s. Mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of firearm deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2016.


Definitions

There is no fixed definition of a mass shooting in the United States, and different researchers define "mass shootings" in different ways.Jon Greenberg
Joe Biden said mass shootings tripled when the assault weapon ban ended. They did
''PolitiFact'' (May 25, 2022).
Among the various definitions are those that are: * Based on injuries: :*
Gun Violence Archive Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is an American nonprofit group with an accompanying website and social media delivery platforms which catalogs every incident of gun violence in the United States. It was founded by Michael Klein and Mark Bryant. Klein i ...
: More broadly defines "mass shooting" to mean four or more (excluding the perpetrator) shot at roughly the same time and location, regardless of number of fatalities or the motive. Brady: United Against Gun Violence uses a similar definition. :* Mass Shooting Tracker: Defines "mass shooting" as "an incident where four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree," including the perpetrator or police shootings of civilians around the perpetrator, and irrespective of the motive of the perpetrator or the location of the murders. * Based on number of deaths: :* Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, signed into law in January 2013: Defines a "mass killing" as the killing of at least three victims, excluding the perpetrator, and regardless of the weapon used. :*
Everytown for Gun Safety Everytown for Gun Safety is an American nonprofit organization which advocates for gun control and against gun violence. Everytown was created in 2013 when Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America joined force ...
, which tracks mass shootings based on press accounts, police records, and court papers, defines mass shooting as "any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter." * Based on number of deaths and nature of attack: :*
Congressional Research Service The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a c ...
(CRS) 2015 report titled ''Mass Murder with Firearms'': Did not define "mass shooting" but defined "public mass shooting" for the purposes of its report as "a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity." The CRS further states that its report "attempts to refine the relatively broad concept of mass shooting...into a narrower formulation: public mass shootings." :* '' Mother Jones's'' open-source database of mass shootings: The magazine's database, established after the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre and updated continuously since that time, defines "mass shootings" as "indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker," excluding "shootings stemming from more conventionally motivated crimes such as armed robbery or gang violence" and shootings in which the perpetrator has not been identified. This definition generally is consistent with the FBI's figures and the data used by criminologists. :* 2022
National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...
/The Violence Project dataset: Defines "mass public shooting" as an incident in which at least four victims were killed with firearms in a single event "and the murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (
armed robbery Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
, criminal competition,
insurance fraud Insurance fraud is any act committed to defraud an insurance process. It occurs when a claimant attempts to obtain some benefit or advantage they are not entitled to, or when an insurer knowingly denies some benefit that is due. According to the ...
, argument, or romantic triangle)."Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories
National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...
/The Violence Project (February 3, 2022).
The appropriateness of a broad versus narrow definition of "mass shooting" has been the subject of debate. Some commentators argue in favor of a narrow definition of mass shootings that excludes the victims of street crime. Mark Follman of ''Mother Jones'', which compiles an open-source database of mass shootings, contends that "While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem." Northeastern University criminologist
James Alan Fox James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy and former dean at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Fox holds a bachelor's degree in sociology (1972), a master's degree i ...
argues against the use of the broad definition of "mass shooting" in the popular press, stating that it misleads readers. Others, by contrast, argue that defining "mass shooting" solely as a shooting in a public place in which the perpetrator fires at random is too narrow. For example, Mark Hay argues that although gang, party, and domestic violence "probably warrant different solutions" than random mass public shootings, a narrow definition fails "to capture and convey the full scope of large-scale gun violence in the United States" and its effect on marginalized communities.


Frequency and locations

Some studies indicate that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred roughly once every 200 days. However, between 2011 and 2014, that rate has accelerated greatly with at least one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in the United States. Under the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive, by the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings; by the end of 2020, there had been 611; and by the end of 2021, 693. By mid-May 2021, there were 10 mass shootings per week on average; by mid-May 2022, there was a total of 198 mass shootings in the first 19 weeks of the year, which represents 11 mass shootings a week. The FBI designated 61 "
active shooter Active shooter or active killer describes the perpetrator of a type of mass murder marked by rapidity, scale, randomness, and often suicide. The United States Department of Homeland Security defines an ''active shooter'' as "an individual activ ...
" incidents (defined as "one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area"). There were ten mass shootings in 2019, two in 2020, and six in 2021. Under the substantially narrower 2022
National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...
/The Violence Project dataset definition, there were 167 mass shootings (4 or more killed with firearms in public, not connected to "underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance") in the U.S. from 1966 to 2019, and 30.8% of the shootings occurred at the workplace. In 2014, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
conducted a review of 160 active shooter incidents in the U.S. from 2000 to 2013 (averaging approximately 11 cases annually) in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The study found that 45.6% took place in a business or commercial setting, 16.9% occurred in schools, 7.5% in institutions of higher education, 9.4% in open spaces, 6.9% in (non-military) government properties, 3.1% in military sites, 4.4% in homes, 3.8% in places of worship, and 2.5% in healthcare settings. FBI data shows that active shooter incidents increased from 2000 to 2019. A comprehensive report by ''
USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
'' tracked all mass killings from 2006 through 2017 in which the perpetrator willfully killed four or more people. For mass killings by firearm for instance, it found 271 incidents with a total of 1,358 victims. Under the
Everytown for Gun Safety Everytown for Gun Safety is an American nonprofit organization which advocates for gun control and against gun violence. Everytown was created in 2013 when Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America joined force ...
definition ("any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter") there were an average of 19 mass shootings in the U.S. each year from 2009 to 2020, with 947 wounded by gunfire and 1,363 fatally shot. The report found that: "In nearly all mass shootings over this period, the shooter was an adult man who acted alone. Thirty-two percent of mass shooters, or 92 shooters, ended with the perpetrator dying by suicide, and another 24 shooters were killed by responding law enforcement. The remaining 145 mass shooters were taken into custody by law enforcement, while the outcomes and identities of 23 remain unknown." In October 2018, '' PLOS One'' published a study analyzing 100 mass shootings from the ''Mother Jones'' database that occurred from January 1982 to May 2018 that used non-homogeneous
Poisson regression In statistics, Poisson regression is a generalized linear model form of regression analysis used to model count data and contingency tables. Poisson regression assumes the response variable ''Y'' has a Poisson distribution, and assumes the logari ...
models on the biannual and annual incidence of mass shootings in the United States to evaluate whether mass shootings became more common in the United States over the preceding three decades that found that mass shootings had steadily increased (with the biannual incidence model having a better
goodness of fit The goodness of fit of a statistical model describes how well it fits a set of observations. Measures of goodness of fit typically summarize the discrepancy between observed values and the values expected under the model in question. Such measure ...
value based upon
Akaike information criterion The Akaike information criterion (AIC) is an estimator of prediction error and thereby relative quality of statistical models for a given set of data. Given a collection of models for the data, AIC estimates the quality of each model, relative to e ...
than the annual incidence model). However, some researchers dispute whether the frequency of mass shootings are increasing due to differences in research methods and differences in the criteria used to define events as mass shootings.


Perpetrator demographics

According to ''The New York Times'', there is no common profile of people who carry out mass shootings in the United States, except that they are mostly men. By
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
, according to a study, the proportion of mass shooters in the United States who are white is about equal to the overall proportion of white people in the general population of the US. According to the same study, Asians are overrepresented in mass shootings, having perpetrated 6.06% of attacks despite being 5.7% of the population. The proportion of male mass shooters is considerably larger than the proportion of males in the general population. According to the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
, white men comprise nearly 50 percent of all mass shooters in the US. According to the National Institute of Justice/The Violence project study, the demographics of shooters were 97.7% male, with an average age of 34.1 years, 52.3% white, 20.9% black, 8.1% latino, 6.4% asian, 4.2% middle eastern, and 1.8% native American. According to the
Center for Inquiry The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government. History The Center for Inquiry was established in 199 ...
, mass shootings of family members (the most common) are usually carried out by white, middle-aged males. Felony-related mass shootings (connected with a previous crime) tend to be committed by young Black or Hispanic males with extensive criminal records, typically against people of the same ethnic group. Public mass shootings of persons unrelated to the shooter, and for a reason not connected with a previous crime (the rarest but most publicized) are committed by men whose racial distribution closely matches that of the nation as a whole. Other than gender, the demographic profiles of public mass shooters are too varied to draw firm conclusions. In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that the perpetrator was female in only 6 of the 160 incidents (4%) and that in only 2 incidents (1%) was there more than one perpetrator. Analogously, in December 2013, the ''
Journal of Forensic Sciences The ''Journal of Forensic Sciences'' (''JFS'') is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal is the official publication of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, published by Wiley-Blackwell. It covers all aspects of forensic science. The mi ...
'' published a sociodemographic network characteristics and antecedent behaviors survey of 119 lone-actor terrorists in the United States and Europe that found that 96.6 percent were male.


Contributing factors


High access to guns

Higher accessibility and ownership of guns has been cited as a reason for the U.S.'s high rate of mass shootings. The US has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world with 120.5 firearms per 100 people; the second highest is Yemen with 52.8 firearms per 100 people. A study published in '' PLOS One'' in 2015 examined mass shootings in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that the "state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings." Conversely, the October 2018 ''PLOS One'' study used a
Bayesian Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister. Bayesian () refers either to a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem, or a followe ...
zero-inflated Poisson regression model to assess the impact of state-level gun ownership rates in predicting state-level mass shooting rates (with state-level SMI rates, state-level poverty rates, and state-level population sizes as covariates) that found that state-level gun ownership rates were not statistically significantly associated with the number of mass shootings in each state. The Bayesian zero-inflated Poisson regression model had a better goodness of fit value based upon
deviance information criterion The deviance information criterion (DIC) is a hierarchical modeling generalization of the Akaike information criterion (AIC). It is particularly useful in Bayesian model selection problems where the posterior distributions of the models have been o ...
than a Bayesian Poisson regression model (which were 102.5 to 145.7 respectively). The researchers then tested the possibility that the relationship between gun ownership and the mass shooting rate was being
confounded In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Con ...
by gun law permissiveness using the Bayesian zero-inflated Poisson regression model and found that gun law permissiveness was only nominally correlated with gun ownership and that gun ownership was not statistically associated with the mass shooting rate with or without gun law permissiveness being adjusted in the model. A 2019 study published in ''
The BMJ ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...
'' conducted a
cross-sectional Cross-sectional data, or a cross section of a study population, in statistics and econometrics, is a type of data collected by observing many subjects (such as individuals, firms, countries, or regions) at the one point or period of time. The analy ...
time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Exa ...
study of U.S. states from 1998 to 2015; the study found that "States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divide appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states." The study specifically found that "A 10% increase in state gun ownership was associated with a significant 35.1% (12.7% to 62.7%, P=0.001) higher rate of mass shootings. Partially adjusted regression analyses produced similar results, as did analyses restricted to domestic and non-domestic mass shootings." A 2020 study published in '' Law and Human Behavior'' examined the relationship of state guns laws and the incidence and lethality of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1976 to 2018.The study found that "laws requiring permits to purchase a gun are associated with a lower incidence of mass public shootings, and bans on large capacity magazines are associated with fewer fatalities and nonfatal injuries when such events do occur." The study specifically found that large-capacity magazine bans were associated with approximately 38% fewer fatalities and 77% fewer nonfatal injuries when a mass shooting occurred. The
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
has endorsed assault weapons bans,
high-capacity magazine ban A high-capacity magazine ban is a law which bans or otherwise restricts high-capacity magazines, detachable firearm magazines that can hold more than a certain number of rounds of ammunition. For example, in the United States, the now-expired F ...
s, and
universal background check Proposals for universal background checks would require almost all firearms transactions in the United States to be recorded and go through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), closing what is sometimes called the priva ...
s as a way to curb gun violence in the U.S.


Perpetrator mental health

A panel of mental health and law enforcement experts has estimated that roughly one-third of acts of mass violence—defined as crimes in which four or more people were killed—since the 1990s were committed by people with a "
serious mental illness Serious mental illness or severe mental illness (SMI) is characterized as any mental health condition that seriously impairs anywhere from one to several significant life activities including day to day functioning. Common diagnoses associated wit ...
" (SMI). However, the study emphasized that people with an SMI are responsible for less than 4% of all the violent acts committed in the United States. The
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
(APA) states that gun violence is a public health crisis and has repeatedly noted that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and "are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence." The APA has endorsed
red flag law In the United States, a red flag law is a gun violence prevention law that permits a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who they believe may present a danger to others or themselves. A judge makes the determina ...
s to remove firearm access from people at high risk of committing acts of violence. In February 2021, ''
Psychological Medicine ''Psychological Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal in the field of psychiatry and related aspects of psychology and basic sciences. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 7.723. History ...
'' published a survey reviewing 14,785 publicly reported murders in
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
news worldwide between 1900 and 2019 compiled in a database by psychiatrists at the
New York State Psychiatric Institute The New York State Psychiatric Institute, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was established in 1895 as one of the first institutions in the United States t ...
and the
Columbia University Irving Medical Center NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center (NYP/CUIMC), also known as the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), is an academic medical center and the largest campus of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. It includes Co ...
which found that of the 1,315 personal-cause mass murders (i.e. driven by personal motivations and not occurring within the context of
war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
, state-sponsored or group-sponsored terrorism, gang activity, or
organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
) only 11 percent of mass murderers and only 8 percent of mass shooters had an SMI (e.g.
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
,
bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
,
major depressive disorder Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...
), that mass shootings have become more common than other forms of mass murder since 1970 (with 73 percent occurring in the United States alone), and that mass shooters in the United States were more likely to have legal histories, to engage in
recreational drug use Recreational drug use indicates the use of one or more psychoactive drugs to induce an altered state of consciousness either for pleasure or for some other casual purpose or pastime by modifying the perceptions and emotions of the user. When a ...
or
alcohol abuse Alcohol abuse encompasses a spectrum of unhealthy alcohol drinking behaviors, ranging from binge drinking to alcohol dependence, in extreme cases resulting in health problems for individuals and large scale social problems such as alcohol-relat ...
, and to display non-
psychotic Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...
psychiatric or
neurologic Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
symptoms. In 2018, the FBI
Behavioral Analysis Unit The Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) is a department of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) that uses behavioral analysts to assist in criminal investigations. The mission of the NCAVC a ...
released a survey of 63 active shooter cases between 2000 and 2013 that found that while 62 percent of active shooters showed symptoms of mental health disorders, those symptoms may have been "transient manifestations of behaviors and moods that would not be sufficient to warrant a formal diagnosis of mental illness", and that only one-fourth of active shooters surveyed had a formal diagnosis of any mental health disorder (and a psychotic disorder in only 3 cases). The survey concludes that given the high lifetime prevalence of the symptoms of mental illness among the U.S. population, "formally diagnosed mental illness is not a very specific predictor of violence of any type, let alone targeted violence." In May 2022, ''
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law ''Psychology, Public Policy, and Law'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. It publishes original empirical papers, reviews, and meta-analyses on the contribution of psychological scienc ...
'' published a survey of 172 mass shooters coded on 166 life history variables conducted by Jillian Peterson, sociologist James Densley (Peterson's co-founder of The Violence Project's database), and criminologists Kyle Knapp, Stasia Higgins, and Amanda Jensen that found that symptoms of psychosis played no role in 69 percent of mass shootings. In the October 2018 ''PLOS One'' study, the Bayesian zero-inflated Poisson regression model that included state-level SMI rates as a covariate to predict state-level mass shooting rates found that state-level SMI rates did not predict state-level mass shooting rates. In 2004, the
U.S. Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and ...
and the
U.S. Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...
issued a report analyzing 41
school shootings A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple ...
in the United States that found that 78 percent of the shooters surveyed had histories of
suicidal ideation Suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, means having thoughts, ideas, or ruminations about the possibility of ending one's own life.World Health Organization, ''ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics'', ver. 09/2020MB26.A Suicidal ideatio ...
or
attempted suicide A suicide attempt is an attempt to die by suicide that results in survival. It may be referred to as a "failed" or "unsuccessful" suicide attempt, though these terms are discouraged by mental health professionals for implying that a suicide resu ...
. In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that 96 of the 160 incidents (60%) ended before police arrived, and in 64 incidents (40%) the shooter committed suicide. In December 2021, the ''Journal of Threat Assessment and Management'' published a study comparing 171 public mass shooters and 63 active shooters in the United States from 1966 to 2019 (using cases compiled in The Violence Project's database) to the general population, homicide offenders, and people who die by
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
. In comparison to the general population, mass shooters were more likely to have a history of mental health issues, to have lifetime
thought disorder A thought disorder (TD) is any disturbance in cognition that adversely affects language and thought content, and thereby communication. A variety of thought disorders were said to be characteristic of people with schizophrenia. A content-thought ...
s, and greater lifetime
suicidal ideation Suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, means having thoughts, ideas, or ruminations about the possibility of ending one's own life.World Health Organization, ''ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics'', ver. 09/2020MB26.A Suicidal ideatio ...
, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters four times more frequently premeditated their homicides, eight times more frequently killed strangers, and were more likely to experience suicidal ideation and commit suicide directly or by cop. In comparison to people who committed suicide, mass shooters were actually more likely to have histories of suicidal ideation and were slightly more likely to premeditate the act. However, like the APA, the researchers emphasized that having a formal mental health disorder diagnosis is more predictive of being a victim of violence rather than a perpetrator. In the December 2013 ''Journal of Forensic Sciences'' lone-actor terrorists survey, lone-actor attacks were rarely sudden or impulsive and the researchers have subsequently noted that a sizable subset of their subjects took preparations to maximize their chances of death by cop or suicide. Based upon the similarities in premeditation and lifetime suicidal ideation, James Densley has argued, "Many of these mass shootings are angry suicides." Jillian Peterson et al., in a
cross-sectional study In medical research, social science, and biology, a cross-sectional study (also known as a cross-sectional analysis, transverse study, prevalence study) is a type of observational study that analyzes data from a population, or a representative s ...
published in ''
JAMA Network Open ''JAMA Network Open'' is a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association covering all aspects of the biomedical sciences. It was established in 2018 and the founding editor-in-chief is Fred Rivara (Universit ...
'' examining 170 perpetrators of mass public shootings from 1996 to 2019, found that 44.3% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing the act, and that "Leakage was associated with receiving counseling and suicidality, which suggests it may be best characterized as a cry for help from perpetrators prior to their act." Peterson wrote: "These findings suggest that leakage is a critical moment for mental health intervention to prevent gun violence."


Sociocultural factors and perpetrator life histories

Psychiatrist
Paul S. Appelbaum Paul Stuart Appelbaum (born 1951) is an American psychiatrist and a leading expert on legal and ethical issues in medicine and psychiatry. Appelbaum has been Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law, and Director, Divisio ...
argued that the data from the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Irving Medical Center database of mass shootings show that "difficulty coping with life events seem more useful foci for prevention
f mass shootings F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. Hist ...
and policy than an emphasis on serious mental illness," while psychiatrist Ronald W. Pies has suggested that
psychopathology Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era. Biological psychopatholo ...
should be understood as a three-gradation
continuum Continuum may refer to: * Continuum (measurement), theories or models that explain gradual transitions from one condition to another without abrupt changes Mathematics * Continuum (set theory), the real line or the corresponding cardinal number ...
of mental, behavioral and emotional disturbance with most mass shooters falling into a middle category of "persistent emotional disturbance." In 2015, psychiatrists James L. Knoll and George D. Annas noted that considering that mass shootings committed by perpetrators with SMIs amount to less than 1 percent of all gun-related homicides (and that most gun deaths in the United States are suicides rather than homicides), the tendency of most media attention following mass shootings on mental health leads to sociocultural factors being comparatively overlooked. Instead, Knoll and Annas cite research by social psychologists
Jean Twenge Jean Marie Twenge (born August 24, 1971) is an American psychologist researching generational differences, including work values, life goals, and speed of development. She is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author, consul ...
and W. Keith Campbell on
narcissism Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...
and
social rejection Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes ''interpersonal rejection'' (or peer rejection), ''romantic rejection'' and ''familial estrangement''. A pers ...
in the personal histories of mass shooters, as well as cognitive scientist
Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...
's suggestion in ''
The Better Angels of Our Nature ''The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined'' is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker, in which the author argues that violence in the world has declined both in the long run and in the short run and suggests explanations as to why this ...
'' (2011) that further reductions in human violence may be dependent upon reducing human narcissism. In the December 2021 ''Journal of Threat Assessment and Management'' study, mass shooters were more likely to be unemployed and be unmarried in comparison to the general population, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters were more likely to not be in an intimate relationship. In the December 2013 ''Journal of Forensic Sciences'' lone-actor terrorists survey, a wide range of activities and experiences preceded lone actors attacks, many but not all lone-actors were socially isolated, lone-actors regularly engaged in a detectable and observable range of activities with a wider pressure group, social movement, or terrorist organization, and a subset of 106 subjects for whom relationship data was available found that 68.9 percent had never married or were divorced or separated from their spouse and only 27.7 percent were reported to have children. British criminologist Peter Squires argued that mass shooters in Europe and the U.S. "tend to be loners with not much social support who strike out at their communities, schools and families." Psychologist Jillian Peterson and James Densley, co-founded The Violence Project, a
National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...
-funded project in which researchers studied approximately 150 mass shooters and coded 50 life history variables for each. Their data suggest that almost all mass shooting perpetrators had four qualities in common: they had (1) commonly experienced
early childhood trauma Early childhood trauma refers to various types of adversity and traumatic events experienced during the early years of a person's life. This is deemed the most critical developmental period in human life by psychologists.Colombo, J. (1982). The cr ...
and exposure to violence; (2) "reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting," often linked to a specific grievance; (3) researched previous mass shootings, with many being
radicalized Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicaliza ...
through the internet; and (4) obtained the means (firearms) to carry out the plan, with perpetrators obtaining weapons from family members in 80% of school shootings, workplace shooters tending to use legally owned handguns, and other public shooters being more likely to acquire firearms illegally. The Violence Project's comprehensive mass shooting database also showed that mass shootings tend to occur in clusters, that mass shooters share a sense of
entitlement An entitlement is a provision made in accordance with a legal framework of a society. Typically, entitlements are based on concepts of principle ("rights") which are themselves based in concepts of social equality or enfranchisement. In psychology ...
and seek
scapegoats Scapegoating is the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals (e.g. "he did it, not me!"), individuals against groups (e.g., ...
when they fail to achieve goals in life, and that hate-motivated and fame-seeking mass shootings have increased since 2015. A 2021 article in the journal ''Injury Epidemiology'' found that from 2014 to 2019, 59.1% of mass shootings in the United States were related to domestic violence (DV), and the shooter either killed a family member or had a DV history in 68.2% of mass shootings. Mass shooting contagion (the " copycat phenomenon") has been studied. A study published in '' PLOS One'' in 2015 examined mass shootings in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that "significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incentivized by similar events in the immediate past," concluding that: "On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days, and each incident incites at least 0.30 new incidents (p = 0.0015). We also find significant evidence of contagion in school shootings, for which an incident is contagious for an average of 13 days and incites an average of at least 0.22 new incidents (p = 0.0001)." In the October 2018 ''PLOS One'' study, the Bayesian zero-inflated Poisson regression model that included state-level poverty rates and state-level population sizes as covariates to predict state-level mass shooting rates found that state-level poverty rates and state-level population sizes did not predict state-level mass shooting rates. However, the researchers also used a Poisson regression model to test if the frequency of online media coverage density and online search interest levels correlated with shorter intervals between any two consecutive incidents. Due to the distributions of online media coverage density being highly
skewed In probability theory and statistics, skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable about its mean. The skewness value can be positive, zero, negative, or undefined. For a unimoda ...
, the researchers first performed a logarithmic
transformation Transformation may refer to: Science and mathematics In biology and medicine * Metamorphosis, the biological process of changing physical form after birth or hatching * Malignant transformation, the process of cells becoming cancerous * Trans ...
on the media coverage variable and adjusted for numbers of fatalities and injuries (which the researchers also did for online search interest). The researchers then applied a pairwise correlation analysis on online media coverage, online search interest levels, and mass shootings and found that both online indices significantly inversely correlated with the time interval between consecutive incidents (i.e. that greater online media posts and online searches correlated with shorter time intervals between incidents and vice versa). The researchers concluded that their findings suggest that online media might correlate with an increasing incidence rate of mass shootings. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has also noted that much of the news media in the United States has an editorial policy of "
if it bleeds, it leads The headline or heading is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents. The large type ''front page headline'' did not come into use until the late 19th centur ...
". Other posited factors contributing to the prevalence of mass shootings include perpetrators' desire to seek revenge for perceived
school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...
or
workplace bullying Workplace bullying is a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes either physical or emotional harm. It can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, and physical abuse, as well as humiliation. T ...
, the widespread chronic gap between people's expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, perpetrators' desire for fame and notoriety,
toxic masculinity Toxic masculinity is a set of certain male behaviors associated with harm to society and men themselves. Traditional stereotypes of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such as misogyny and homophobia, can be considered "toxic" d ...
(mass shootings are perpetrated almost exclusively by men and boys), and a failure of government background checks due to incomplete databases and/or staff shortages. Feminist activist and psychotherapist
Harriet Fraad Harriet Fraad (born August 19, 1941) is a feminist activist, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in New York City. She has been practicing as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist for 37 years. She is said to be a founding member of the Feminist mo ...
and
Marxian economist Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian e ...
Richard D. Wolff Richard David Wolff (born April 1, 1942) is an American Marxian economist known for his work on economic methodology and class analysis. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor ...
contend that "American hyper-capitalism" fosters loneliness and social alienation among American men who become mass shooters.


Weapons used

Several types of guns have been used in mass shootings in the United States, including semi-automatic handguns,
semi-automatic rifle A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-act ...
s,
revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...
s, and
shotgun A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...
s. Of the 172 events from 1966 to 2019 classified as mass public shootings (four or more victims killed) in the U.S. by the 2022
National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...
/The Violence Project dataset, perpetrators used handguns in 77.2% of cases and semi-automatic rifles in 25.1% of cases. An earlier 2016 study by
James Alan Fox James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy and former dean at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Fox holds a bachelor's degree in sociology (1972), a master's degree i ...
and Emma E. Fridel similarly concluded that "rather than assault weapons, semiautomatic handguns are the weapons of choice for most mass shooters."
High-capacity magazine A high-capacity magazine (or large-capacity magazine) is a magazine capable of holding more than the usual number of rounds of ammunition for a particular firearm. A magazine may also be defined as high-capacity in a legal sense, based on the nu ...
s were used in more than half of mass shootings over the four decades up to 2018. From 1966 to 2019, approximately 77% of mass shooters in the U.S. legally obtained the firearm used in the attacks. Although semi-automatic rifles are used in only 1% of overall shootings in the U.S., they are used in 25% of mass shootings, and (as of 2018) in six of the ten deadliest mass shooting events.


Effects


Political

A ''
British Journal of Political Science ''British Journal of Political Science'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of political science. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in EBSCOhost, International Political Science Abstr ...
'' study first published in 2017 (and in print in 2019) found that increase in proximity to mass public shootings in the U.S. was associated with statistically significant and "substantively meaningful" increases in support for stricter gun control laws. The study also found that repeated events, magnitude, and recency of mass shootings play a role with "proximity to repeated events, more horrific events and more recent events" increasing "the salience of gun violence, and thus ... support for gun control." However, the study found that the "most powerful effects" in support or opposition to gun control "are driven by variables related to local culture, with pronounced but expected differences emerging between respondents in rural, conservative, and gun-heavy areas and those residing in urban, liberal areas with few firearm stores." A separate 2019 replication study, extending the earlier
panel analysis Panel (data) analysis is a statistical method, widely used in social science, epidemiology, and econometrics to analyze two-dimensional (typically cross sectional and longitudinal) panel data. The data are usually collected over time and over the sa ...
, found no evidence that mass shootings caused a "significant or substantively meaningful main effect" on attitudes toward gun control. However, the study did find evidence that mass shootings "have polarizing effects conditional on partisanship": "That is, Democrats who live near a mass shooting even tend to become more supportive of gun control restrictions, while Republican attitudes shift in the opposite direction." The study authors concluded, "To the extent that mass shootings may affect public opinion, the result is polarizing rather than consensus building." A 2020 study published in the ''
American Political Science Review The ''American Political Science Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all areas of political science. It is an official journal of the American Political Science Association and is published on their behalf by Cambridg ...
'' using data on school shootings from 2006 to 2018 concluded the incidents had "little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States," whereas a 2021 study in the same journal covering a broader time period (1980–2016) found that the vote share of the Democratic Party increased by an average of almost 5 percentage points in counties that had experienced a "rampage-style"
school shooting A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple c ...
. Both studies found no increase in
voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Unive ...
. A 2021 study published in ''
PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scien ...
'' concluded that "mass shootings have a strong impact on the emotions of individuals, but the impact is politicized, limited to individuals living within the town or city where the incident occurs, and fades within a week of the incident." The study authors suggested that this phenomenon could help explain why mass shootings in the U.S. have not led to meaningful policy reform efforts.


Public health

A
review article A review article is an article that summarizes the current state of understanding on a topic within a certain discipline. A review article is generally considered a secondary source since it may analyze and discuss the method and conclusions i ...
first published online in 2015 and then printed in January 2017 in the journal ''
Trauma, Violence, & Abuse ''Trauma, Violence, & Abuse'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on trauma, abuse, and violence. The journal's editor-in-chief is Jon R. Conte (University of Washington). It was established in 2000 and is currently published ...
'', concluded that "mass shootings are associated with a variety of adverse psychological outcomes in survivors and members of affected communities" and that while "the psychological effects of mass shootings on indirectly exposed populations" is less well-understood, "there is evidence that such events lead to at least short-term increases in fears and declines in perceived safety." Identified risk factors for adverse psychological outcomes have included, among others, demographics, greater proximity to the attack, acquaintance with victims, and less access to psychosocial resources.


Deadliest mass shootings since 1949

The following mass shootings are the deadliest to have occurred in modern U.S. history. Only incidents with ten or more fatalities, excluding those of the perpetrators, are included. This list starts in 1949, the year in which
Howard Unruh Howard Barton Unruh (January 21, 1921 – October 19, 2009) was an American mass murderer who shot and killed thirteen people during a twelve-minute walk through his neighborhood in Camden, New Jersey, on September 6, 1949 in an incident that b ...
committed his shooting, which was the first in modern U.S. history to incur ten or more fatalities. : Was previously the deadliest mass shooting


See also

* List of school massacres by death toll * Gun laws in the United States *
Gun laws in the United States by state Gun laws in the United States regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. State laws (and the laws of the District of Columbia and of the U.S. territories) vary considerably, and are independent of existing federal fire ...
*
Gun violence in the United States Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually, and was the leading cause of death for children 19 and younger in 2020. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available as of 2021, the ...
*
List of rampage killers in the United States This section of the list of rampage killers contains those cases that occurred in the United States. This section does not include school massacres; workplace killings; religious, political or racial crimes; or mass murders that took place p ...
*
School shootings in the United States A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple c ...
*
Spree killer A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations ...
* Public opinion on gun control in the United States


Explanatory notes


References


External links

*
Most Comprehensive Mass Shooter Database
The Violence Project {{School shootings in the United States Gun violence in the United States