In the period between 2011 and 2024, the number of homicide victims in Norway peaked in 2011, when 110 people were murdered in the country. This includes the fatalities of the terrorist attack on July 22 that year. In the years thereafter, the number of homicide victims was usually between 20 and 30, but reached 37 in 2024. Moreover, the balance between male and female victims was pretty even through the period considered.

Number, percentage and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, by gender (all genders; male; female; gender unknown) and Indigenous identity (total; Indigenous identity; non-Indigenous identity; unknown Indigenous identity), Canada, provinces and territories, 2014 to 2020.

In 2019, France had the highest number of overall homicides in Europe at 835, with 285 of the victims being women. Germany had the second highest number of intentional homicides in that year, at 623 with 347 of those victims being male.

Number, percentage and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, by racialized identity group (total, by racialized identity group; racialized identity group; South Asian; Chinese; Black; Filipino; Arab; Latin American; Southeast Asian; West Asian; Korean; Japanese; other racialized identity group; multiple racialized identity; racialized identity, but racialized identity group is unknown; rest of the population; unknown racialized identity group), gender (all genders; male; female; gender unknown) and region (Canada; Atlantic region; Quebec; Ontario; Prairies region; British Columbia; territories), 2019 to 2023.

More men than women are victims of homicide in Sweden. The number of men who were killed in violent crimes increased from 2012 to 2015, but has remained more stable since. Meanwhile, the number of female homicide victims was usually between 25 and 30 during the past decade. In 2022, 93 men and 23 women were confirmed as homicide victims in Sweden. Compared to other European countries, Sweden's homicide rate was around the average.

Considering the over 46,000 homicides registered in Brazil in 2022, almost 92 percent had men as victims. Meanwhile, approximately 3,810 women were killed in the South American country that year.

Iceland had a relatively low number of murders each year from 2010 to 2022. There were never more than three murders yearly between 2010 and 2019. However, in 2020, five people fell victims to murders on the island, an unusually high number in the country. In 2022, there were four homicide victims in Iceland.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON JUNE 30

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

Descriptive male and female homicide victim characteristics in South Africa in 2017 by external cause of death, age, province, population group, month of year, day of week and alcohol-relatedness (weighted).

In 2023, around 88.9 percent of all recorded homicides in Chile had a male victim. During the last few years, male victims recorded over 85 percent of homicides. The South American country had one of the lowest homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 2022, the state of Bahia reported the largest number of homicides in Brazil. That year, 6,776 homicides were recorded in this northeastern state. Bahia was followed by the state of Rio de Janeiro, with 3,762 murders reported. Despite that, the number of homicides in Brazil reached the lowest figure that year since at least 2006, totaling 40,464. Homicide targets Data shows that homicides affected men disproportionaly more than women in this South American country. Considering the over 46,340 homicides registered in Brazil in 2022, nearly 92 percent had men as victims. Again, it is important to remember the deterioration of data quality, specially in the case of femicides: there was a woman victim of violent death with no clear cause for every woman victim of homicide in Brazil. In that regard, the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Rondônia had the highest femicide rates. At least three of every 100,000 women who lived in those territories were murdered on account of their gender in 2023. Not only women, but the number of black and brown people murdered in Brazil had been growing throughout the years up until 2017, revealing that minorities are increasingly becoming the targets of violence. In 2022, nearly 35,500 people of color were killed in Brazil, over three times the number of non-black or non-brown people. Police Violence Police brutality has been gaining attention from the media, especially after George Floyd violent death in 2020. In Brazil, police violence, particularly in poor areas, such as favelas, is an old and well-known problem that affects society as a whole. Figures have shown that the number of civilians killed by police officers in Brazil surpassed 6,350 in both 2021 and 2022. Coincidentally, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, the Brazilian states with the highest number of homicides, are also the ones with the highest number of people killed by the police. In Rio, the state with the second-highest figure, people of color were the main victims of deadly police interventions.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 9,284 Black murder victims in the United States and 7,289 white murder victims. In comparison, there were 554 murder victims of unknown race and 586 victims of another race. Victims of inequality? In recent years, the role of racial inequality in violent crimes such as robberies, assaults, and homicides has gained public attention. In particular, the issue of police brutality has led to increasing attention following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Studies show that the rate of fatal police shootings for Black Americans was more than double the rate reported of other races. Crime reporting National crime data in the United States is based off the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new crime reporting system, which requires law enforcement agencies to self-report their data in detail. Due to the recent implementation of this system, less crime data has been reported, with some states such as Delaware and Pennsylvania declining to report any data to the FBI at all in the last few years, suggesting that the Bureau's data may not fully reflect accurate information on crime in the United States.

Comparison of homicide characteristics between 2009 and 2017 by sex and effect measure of study year and sex.

From January to December 2024, a total of 797 murders were classified as femicides in Mexico. This type of homicide is defined as the killing of a woman or girl on account of their gender. The number of Mexican women who were victims of femicide grew considerably throughout the studied period. In Latin America, Brazil was the country with the highest number of femicides.

This dataset contains counts of deaths for California counties based on information entered on death certificates. Final counts are derived from static data and include out-of-state deaths to California residents, whereas provisional counts are derived from incomplete and dynamic data. Provisional counts are based on the records available when the data was retrieved and may not represent all deaths that occurred during the time period. Deaths involving injuries from external or environmental forces, such as accidents, homicide and suicide, often require additional investigation that tends to delay certification of the cause and manner of death. This can result in significant under-reporting of these deaths in provisional data.

The final data tables include both deaths that occurred in each California county regardless of the place of residence (by occurrence) and deaths to residents of each California county (by residence), whereas the provisional data table only includes deaths that occurred in each county regardless of the place of residence (by occurrence). The data are reported as totals, as well as stratified by age, gender, race-ethnicity, and death place type. Deaths due to all causes (ALL) and selected underlying cause of death categories are provided. See temporal coverage for more information on which combinations are available for which years.

The cause of death categories are based solely on the underlying cause of death as coded by the International Classification of Diseases. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury." It is a single value assigned to each death based on the details as entered on the death certificate. When more than one cause is listed, the order in which they are listed can affect which cause is coded as the underlying cause. This means that similar events could be coded with different underlying causes of death depending on variations in how they were entered. Consequently, while underlying cause of death provides a convenient comparison between cause of death categories, it may not capture the full impact of each cause of death as it does not always take into account all conditions contributing to the death.

Research on media representations of gender-based violence GBV murders from multiple social contexts is available, but no literature review study. This work assesses this gap by examining 213 studies that analysed empirical evidence from 45 countries. Our mixed methodology provides a mapping of the literature in a scientific and transparent process. Our results show that the representation depends on the media type and not the country. The most analysed are news, finding victim-blaming, perpetrator-justification, and otherization narratives, but these were also found in other media. Social media, literature, and artistic materials help increase the visibility of activists and victims, can convey the context of GBV help to social awareness, or reproduce stereotypes that minimize, naturalize, and legitimize GBV.

The Global Violent Deaths (GVD) database integrates indicators on the major causes of lethal interpersonal and communal violence—intentional and unintentional homicides, killings in legal interventions, and direct conflict deaths—and combines them in a single violent deaths indicator. These indicators are also reported in a disaggregated format by the sex of the victim and perpetration mechanism, namely firearm killings. The GVD database tracks this information across 222 countries and territories worldwide yearly from 2004 and reports both crude counts and rates per 100,000 population. The input data is retrieved from reliable sources, such as governments, national and international organizations, trusted non-governmental organizations, and verified media outlets. Missing data points are estimated using the methods described in this document.

The GVD database is updated annually by the Small Arms Survey, an associated programme of the Geneva Graduate Institute, which strengthens the capacity of governments and practitioners to reduce illicit arms flows and armed violence. This is done through three mutually reinforcing activities: the generation of policy-relevant knowledge, the development of authoritative resources and tools, and the provision of training and other services. The GVD database benefits from financial support from governments and organizations, and notably its core donors, who are publicly disclosed online. The Small Arms Survey follows rigorous procedures to ensure that the input data, the applied methods, and the results are of reasonable quality. If the user encounters apparent errors, they should contact us via email at media@smallarmssurvey.org.

Regions, sub-regions, countries, and territories are defined based on the classification system used by the UN Statistical Division (2013 revision), except for Kosovo, England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. The names and designations reported in the database do not imply any sort of endorsement by the Small Arms Survey.

In 2020, there were 257 women killed by male single offenders in the state of Texas. Texas was the state with the highest number of women murdered by men in single offender homicides. California had the second most women killed by male single offenders, at 222 cases.

The dataset contains year-, state-, type-of-crime- and gender-wise compiled data on the number of different types of crimes which were committed against children and the number of victims who were affected by the same crimes. The different types of crimes covered in the dataset include kidnapping and abduction crimes such as kidanapping and abduction for the purpose of murder, begging, ransom, compelling for marriage, procuration of minor girls, importation of girls from foreign countries, missing deemed as kidnapped, etc., fatal crimes such as murder, attempt to commit murder, muder with rape, abetment of suicide of child, infanticide, foeticide, trafficking and sexual crimes such buying and selling of minors for prostitution, use of children for pornography, transmiting sexual content and material involving children in sexually explicit acts, sexual assualt, penetrative sexual assault, rape, and other crimes such as child labour, child marriage, exposure, abandaonment, simple hurt, grievous hurt, insult and assualt of damage modesty, crimes under juvenile justice act and transplantation of organs act, etc.

The dataset also categorizes the above crimes by the pertinent legislations and their specific secitons against which the crimes have been committed against children.

Note: The rate of crimes in the dataset refers to number of crimes committed against Children by projected population of children in Lakhs

Abstract (en): The Home Safety Project was a population-based case control study of homicide in the home with control households matched to cases by victim age range, race, gender, and neighborhood (a proxy for socioeconomic status). The study was conducted in the following locations: Shelby County, Tennessee (August 23, 1987-August 23, 1992), King County, Washington (August 23, 1987-August 23, 1992), and Cuyahoga County, Ohio (January 1, 1990-August 23, 1992). The purpose of the data collection was to study risk and protective factors for homicide in the home and to identify individual and household factors associated with homicide (both behavioral and environmental). Respondents were asked a series of questions related to alcohol consumption, such as whether drinking ever created problems between household members, whether any household members had had trouble at work because of drinking, whether any physical fights or other violence had occurred in the home or outside the home due to drinking, and whether any injuries or hospital stays had resulted from drinking/fighting episodes. Additional queries covered whether any adult in the household had ever been arrested for any reason, whether anyone in the household used illicit drugs, and, if so, which ones. Questions on home safety features included whether the home had a burglar alarm, bars on the windows, exterior door deadbolt, security door, dogs, and any restricted access to the residence. Items on gun ownership covered whether there were any guns in the home and, if so, what type. Information also was elicited on the homicide that had taken place in the home, including whether the suspect was intimate with the victim, whether there was evidence of forced entry or entry without consent, whether the victim attempted to resist, and the respondent's assumption of the method of death as well as the medical examiner's determination. Demographic information includes victims' age, sex, and race, and respondents' age and sex. The unit of analysis is individual cases of homicide. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.. All homicides in homes that involved residents of the three study counties (Shelby County, Tennessee, King County, Washington, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio) during the study interval. Any death that was ruled a homicide was included, regardless of method. Assaults were included if the victim died within three months due to injury. 2006-03-30 File CB6898.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.1997-11-18 One variable was recoded in Part 1, Homicide Data, and corresponding changes were made to the codebook and data definition statements. Also, in the codebook and data definition statements, several value labels were changed and the order of two variables was switched. Funding insitution(s): United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CCR 402424 and CCR 403519). All individual identifiers were removed by the principal investigators to protect confidentiality.