In 2025, there were seven mass shootings recorded in the United States. This is compared to two mass shootings in 2024. Over the observed period, the highest number of mass shooting events to take place in a single year was 12, most recently in 2023. School shootings The United States sees the most school shootings in the world. Some motivations for school shootings included depression, seeking revenge, and bullying. Due to the large number of school shootings, gun control has become a central topic in U.S. politics. This widespread problem occurs across the country; however, California saw the highest number of K-12 school shootings in the United States since 1970. However, the deadliest school shooting was the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. This tragedy left 33 dead and 23 injured. Mass shooting issues Mass shootings happen when there are several injuries or deaths from firearm-related violence. Despite the increase in mass shootings and the number of casualties, the U.S. government has achieved little in mitigating the problem. Furthermore, the right to bear arms is an important belief in the U.S. and the percentage of households in the United States owning at least one firearm has remained relatively steady since 1972.

Context

Mass Shootings in the United States of America (1966-2017)

The US has witnessed 398 mass shootings in last 50 years that resulted in 1,996 deaths and 2,488 injured. The latest and the worst mass shooting of October 2, 2017 killed 58 and injured 515 so far. The number of people injured in this attack is more than the number of people injured in all mass shootings of 2015 and 2016 combined.

The average number of mass shootings per year is 7 for the last 50 years that would claim 39 lives and 48 injured per year.

Content

Geography: United States of America

Time period: 1966-2017

Unit of analysis: Mass Shooting Attack

Dataset: The dataset contains detailed information of 398 mass shootings in the United States of America that killed 1996 and injured 2488 people.

Variables: The dataset contains Serial No, Title, Location, Date, Summary, Fatalities, Injured, Total Victims, Mental Health Issue, Race, Gender, and Lat-Long information.

Acknowledgements

I’ve consulted several public datasets and web pages to compile this data.

Some of the major data sources include Wikipedia, Mother Jones, Stanford, USA Today and other web sources.

Inspiration

With a broken heart, I like to call the attention of my fellow Kagglers to use Machine Learning and Data Sciences to help me explore these ideas:

• How many people got killed and injured per year?

• Visualize mass shootings on the U.S map

• Is there any correlation between shooter and his/her race, gender

• Any correlation with calendar dates? Do we have more deadly days, weeks or months on average

• What cities and states are more prone to such attacks

• Can you find and combine any other external datasets to enrich the analysis, for example, gun ownership by state

• Any other pattern you see that can help in prediction, crowd safety or in-depth analysis of the event

• How many shooters have some kind of mental health problem? Can we compare that shooter with general population with same condition

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 3

This is the new Version of Mass Shootings Dataset. I've added eight new variables:

Incident Area (where the incident took place), Open/Close Location (Inside a building or open space) Target (possible target audience or company), Cause (Terrorism, Hate Crime, Fun (for no obvious reason etc.) Policeman Killed (how many on duty officers got killed) Age (age of the shooter) Employed (Y/N) Employed at (Employer Name) Age, Employed and Employed at (3 variables) contain shooter details

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 4

Quite a few missing values have been added

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 5

Three more recent mass shootings have been added including the Texas Church shooting of November 5, 2017

I hope it will help create more visualization and extract patterns.

Keep Coding!

As of March 2026, California had the most mass shootings in the United States, with 26 total shootings since 1982. These were incidents where three or more people were killed. California was followed by Texas with 15 mass shooting events. Firearms in the U.S. Mass shootings in the United States are disturbingly common. In comparison with other Western countries, there are significantly more shootings in the U.S., which some theorize is due to the relatively lax gun control laws. Gun control laws in the U.S. are dependent on the state, and the right to own a firearm is enshrined in the United States Constitution. Mass shootings The worst mass shooting in the U.S. was the Las Vegas Strip massacre in 2017, which resulted in 58 deaths and 546 injuries. 13 of the worst mass shootings in the U.S. have occurred over the last decade, the majority of which were carried out by shooters who are white and male.

Context

1 in 4 mass shooting victims were children and teens. In the years between 2009 and 2020, the horrific scenes of mass shootings have haunted the nation’s collective conscience.US states with weaker gun laws and higher gun ownership rates have higher rates of mass shootings. Mass shooting is defined as any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter. The number of mass shootings that plague this country is far too high, and the counts are just a small fraction of the lives left forever changed after the tragedy of a mass shooting. So here is the data for list of mass shootings in United States from 2018 - 2022.

Content

This dataset has five csv files of years 2018 - 2022. Each data contains following attributes - Date : The date on which the mass shooting incident happened - State : The state where the incident took place - Dead : total number of people died in mass shooting - Injured: total number of people who got injured in mass shooting- - Total : total of dead and injured people - Description : description/short report of the incident which may include information like gender/place etc. Data for 2022 Mass shootings will be updated every 15 days!

Acknowledgements

This data was scraped from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States using BeautifulSoup.

Image banner by Wall Street Journal

Inspiration

• EDA and Viz.
• Which state has highest number of mass shootings
• Contextual analysis of the description column
• Trend of mass shooting in past years
• Number of people killed/injured on an average in a month.

Check out my other works

• Datasets
• Notebooks

Between August 1982 and March 2026, 153 mass shootings have been carried out in the United States by male shooters. In contrast, only six mass shootings have been carried out by or involved a woman shooter. Gun ownership in the U.S. Possession of firearms in the United States is protected by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution and has been a defining aspect of American civil liberties since the writing of the Bill of Rights. It is estimated that the United States has the highest rate of civilian-owned firearms in the world, and Americans continually poll against handgun restrictions. Mass shootings However, with high gun ownership comes high responsibility. The United States consistently faces numerous mass shootings each year, particularly in schools. The five deadliest mass shootings have all occurred since 2007, with the deadliest being the Las Vegas Strip massacre in 2017, which claimed the lives of 58 people and injured 546 more.

Between August 1982 and March 2026, 159 mass shootings were recorded in the United States. In 87 of them, the shooter was white. The perpetrator was Black in 27 cases and Latino in 12. In percentage terms, that amounted to about 55 percent white, 17 percent Black and 8 percent Latino. Race of mass shooters reflects the U.S. population Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole. Furthermore, looking at the mass shootings in the U.S. by gender clearly demonstrates that the majority of mass shootings are carried out by men. Mass shootings and mental health With no clear patterns between the socio-economic or cultural background of mass shooters, increasing attention has been placed on mental health. An analysis found that in over half of the mass shootings since 1982, the shooter showed prior signs of mental health issues. Mass shootings and guns In the wake of multiple mass shootings, critics have sought to look beyond the issues of shooter identification and their influences by focusing on their access to guns. The majority of mass shootings in the U.S. involve firearms that were obtained legally. Gun control takes on a particular significance when the uniquely American phenomenon of school shootings is considered. The annual number of incidents involving firearms at K-12 schools in the U.S. was over 100 in each year since 2018. Conversely, similar incidents in other developed countries were exceptionally rare.

The graph displays the number of mass shootings in the U.S. by year from 1982 to 2025, with the x-axis representing the years and the y-axis showing the number of incidents per year. The data reveals a significant increase in mass shootings over time, with the highest numbers recorded in 2018, 2022, and 2023, each with 12 incidents. In the early years (1982-2000), mass shootings were relatively low, typically one to three incidents per year. However, after 2012 (7 incidents), the numbers began rising sharply, with 2017 recording 11 incidents and 2019 reaching 10. The data highlights a concerning upward trend in mass shootings over the past two decades.

Details Mass Shootings in the United States of America (1982-2022) The US has witnessed 124 mass shootings in the last 40 years, resulting in 997 deaths and 1420 injuries. The latest and the worst mass shooting of October 2, 2017, killed 58 and wounded 546. The number of people injured in this attack is more than those injured in all mass shootings of 2015 and 2016 combined.

Dataset Content Country: United States of America Period: 1982-2022 Dataset: The dataset contains detailed information of 124 mass shootings in the United States of America that killed 997 and caused 1420 injuries. Variables: CASE, GENDER, SHOOTINGTYPE, RACE, STATE, DATE, YEAR, FATALITIES, WOUNDED, TOTALVICTIMS, LOCATIONTYPE, PRIORSIGNSOFMENTALILLNESS, WEAPONSOBTAINEDLEGALLY, NUMWEAPONS, ASSAULT

The graph displays the Top 5 states with the most mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982 to 2025, with the x-axis representing states and the y-axis showing the total number of mass shootings recorded in each state. California leads with 26 mass shootings, followed by Florida and Texas, each with 13 and 14 incidents respectively. Other states with high numbers include Colorado (8), Washington (7). The data shows that mass shootings have occurred across a wide range of states, with some experiencing significantly more incidents than others.

The most severe mass shooting by number of fatalities in United States history occurred on October 1, 2017, when Stephen Paddock shot into a crowd of concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip. He killed 58 people and injured 546 others, then took his own life before authorities could apprehend him. Most recently, one of the worst mass shootings in the U.S. occurred in Maine on October 26, 2023, when Robert Card, an Army reservist and firearms instructor, opened fire in a bowling alley and a bar, killing 18 and injuring 13 others. Card then became the focus of a two-day-long manhunt, until he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Mass shootings in the US from 2014 to 2017

The American Public Health Association classifies gun violence in America as a public health crisis (American Public Health Association 2025), noting that violence is contagious and can become epidemic in a society, but it is also preventable. Mass shootings are an extreme form of gun violence—classified as such when 4 or more people are shot (including the shooter) (Mass Shooting Tracker 2025). Mass shootings are more concentrated in areas of the country where there are more self-reports of having fair to poor health. According to the Mass Shooting Tracker (Mass Shooting Tracker 2025), there have been 408 mass shootings so far this year, as of October 19, 2025, in the United States. Public health approaches to this crisis focus on reducing risk and addressing the underlying factors that contribute to these outcomes (Prevention Institute 2025). Adopting the public health paradigm (Kaufman and Galea 2021) and framework towards gun violence may be the cultural, political, and societal shift required to finally reduce risk from exposure, mitigate harm, and improve health outcomes in the US.

The dataset contains detailed information on mass shooting attacks that took place in the United States of America in 1966 - 2017.

Source: https://www.kaggle.com/zusmani/us-mass-shootings-last-50-years/version/4#Mass%20Shootings%20Dataset%20Ver%205.csv

US Mass Shootings, 1982–2023: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation

The full data set from our in-depth investigation into mass shootings.

This database originally covered cases from 1982 to 2012 and has since been updated and expanded numerous times. For analysis and context on this data—including how we built the database, and a change to the baseline for victim fatalities with cases dating from January 2013—see our Guide to Mass Shootings in America, which includes an interactive map documenting all of the cases.

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

UPDATES WEEKLY

US Mass Shootings, 1982–2023: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation

The full data set from our in-depth investigation into mass shootings.

This database originally covered cases from 1982 to 2012 and has since been updated and expanded numerous times. For analysis and context on this data—including how we built the database, and a change to the baseline for victim fatalities with cases dating from January 2013—see our Guide to Mass Shootings in America, which includes an interactive map documenting all of the cases.

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

Included mass shootings from 2014–2019 along with shooting characteristics.

103 of the mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and March 2026 involved weapons that were obtained legally. Only 16 incidents involved guns that were obtained illegally. Legally owned firearms in the U.S. Within the United States, one must be at least 18 years old to purchase shotguns, rifles, and ammunition, and at least 21 years old to purchase all other firearms. Some people may be restricted from owning firearms, such as individuals who have been dishonorably discharged from the military or tourists. Guns must be sold through licensed dealers, and purchasers must undergo a background check. However, the much-discussed “gun show loophole” allows people to purchase firearms from a flea market, gun show, online, or from a personal collector without a background check. The national firearm conversation The right to own a gun in the United States is protected by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. While changing a part of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) would be extremely difficult, the issue of gun rights has become a highly controversial, and highly partisan, topic in the national conversation. For example, a majority of Republicans believe that if legal gun ownership is controlled, that there will not be a difference in the number of mass shootings. In contrast, most Democrats believe the number will decrease.

Data Contains: - Incident ID: an ID assigned by GunViolenceArchive - Incident Date - Year - State - City or County - Address - # Killed - # Injured - # Victims: a column created by me to add killed and injured victims - Operations - Mass Shooting: a column created by me to indicate mass shootings. Binary where all values are 1

In 2025, 24 people were killed in mass shootings in the United States. By March 2026, a total of 1,186 victims were fatally injured during mass shootings since 1982.

BackgroundSeveral past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community, apparently due to the coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk individuals to commit similar acts.MethodsHere we explore whether or not contagion is evident in more high-profile incidents, such as school shootings and mass killings (incidents with four or more people killed). We fit a contagion model to recent data sets related to such incidents in the US, with terms that take into account the fact that a school shooting or mass murder may temporarily increase the probability of a similar event in the immediate future, by assuming an exponential decay in contagiousness after an event.ConclusionsWe find significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incented by similar events in the immediate past. 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). All p-values are assessed based on a likelihood ratio test comparing the likelihood of a contagion model to that of a null model with no contagion. On average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US, while school shootings occur on average monthly. We find that state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings.