Number and percentage of homicide victims, by type of firearm used to commit the homicide (total firearms; handgun; rifle or shotgun; fully automatic firearm; sawed-off rifle or shotgun; firearm-like weapons; other firearms, type unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2018.

Number and percentage of homicide victims, by type of firearm used to commit the homicide (total firearms; handgun; rifle or shotgun; other firearm-like weapons; firearm, type of firearm is unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2023.

In recent years, gun violence in the United States has become an alarmingly common occurrence. From 2016, there has been over 10,000 homicides by firearm in the U.S. each year and firearms have been found to make up the majority of murder weapons in the country by far, demonstrating increasing rates of gun violence occurring throughout the nation. As of 2025, Mississippi was the state with the highest gun violence rate per 100,000 residents in the United States, at 29.4 percent, followed by Louisiana, at 28.1 percent. In comparison, Massachusetts had a gun violence rate of 3.7 percent, the lowest out of all the states. The importance of gun laws Gun laws in the United States vary from state to state, which has been found to affect the differing rates of gun violence throughout the country. Fewer people die by gun violence in states where gun safety laws have been passed, while gun violence rates remain high in states where gun usage is easily permitted and even encouraged. In addition, some states suffer from high rates of gun violence despite having strong gun safety laws due to gun trafficking, as traffickers can distribute firearms illegally past state lines. The right to bear arms Despite evidence from other countries demonstrating that strict gun control measures reduce rates of gun violence, the United States has remained reluctant to enact gun control laws. This can largely be attributed to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which states that citizens have the right to bear arms. Consequently, gun control has become a highly partisan issue in the U.S., with 80 percent of Democrats believing that it was more important to limit gun ownership while 74 percent of Republicans felt that it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON JUNE 7

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.

Number of homicide victims, by method used to commit the homicide (total methods used; shooting; stabbing; beating; strangulation; fire (burns or suffocation); other methods used; methods used unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2023.

Data tables relating to offences involving weapons as recorded by police and hospital episode statistics.

The study was a comprehensive analysis of felonious killings of officers. The purposes of the study were (1) to analyze the nature and circumstances of incidents of felonious police killings and (2) to analyze trends in the numbers and rates of killings across different types of agencies and to explain these differences. For Part 1, Incident-Level Data, an incident-level database was created to capture all incidents involving the death of a police officer from 1983 through 1992. Data on officers and incidents were collected from the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data collection as coded by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. In addition to the UCR data, the Police Foundation also coded information from the LEOKA narratives that are not part of the computerized LEOKA database from the FBI. For Part 2, Agency-Level Data, the researchers created an agency-level database to research systematic differences among rates at which law enforcement officers had been feloniously killed from 1977 through 1992. The investigators focused on the 56 largest law enforcement agencies because of the availability of data for explanatory variables. Variables in Part 1 include year of killing, involvement of other officers, if the officer was killed with his/her own weapon, circumstances of the killing, location of fatal wounds, distance between officer and offender, if the victim was wearing body armor, if different officers were killed in the same incident, if the officer was in uniform, actions of the killer and of the officer at entry and final stage, if the killer was visible at first, if the officer thought the killer was a felon suspect, if the officer was shot at entry, and circumstances at anticipation, entry, and final stages. Demographic variables for Part 1 include victim's sex, age, race, type of assignment, rank, years of experience, agency, population group, and if the officer was working a security job. Part 2 contains variables describing the general municipal environment, such as whether the agency is located in the South, level of poverty according to a poverty index, population density, percent of population that was Hispanic or Black, and population aged 15-34 years old. Variables capturing the crime environment include the violent crime rate, property crime rate, and a gun-related crime index. Lastly, variables on the environment of the police agencies include violent and property crime arrests per 1,000 sworn officers, percentage of officers injured in assaults, and number of sworn officers.

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.

In the United States, gun laws vary from one state to the next; whether residents need a permit or a background check to purchase a firearm, whether residents must undergo firearm training before making this purchase, and whether residents can openly carry their guns in public is dependent upon state legislation. As of 2024, 22 U.S. states required background checks and/or permits for the purchase of a handgun. A further 13 states had regulations on openly carrying firearms in public, however, only California, Connecticut, Florida, and Illinois had completely prohibited open carry for all firearms. In comparison, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York prohibited open carry for handguns but either did not have regulations in place or required a permit for other types of guns. A constitutional right The Second Amendment of the Constitution, which states that citizens have the right to bear arms, has made it difficult for any gun control legislation to be passed on a national level in the United States. As a result, gun control laws in the U.S. are state-based, and often differ based on political perspectives. States with strong gun laws in place, such as Massachusetts, generally experience less gun violence, however, some states with strong gun laws, such as Maryland, continue to face high rates of gun violence, which has largely been attributed to gun trafficking activity found throughout the nation. A culture of gun owners In comparison to other high-income countries with stricter gun control laws, the United States has the highest gun homicide rate at 4.38 gun homicides per 100,000 residents. However, despite increasing evidence that easy access to firearms, whether legal or illegal, encourages higher rates of gun violence, the United States continues to foster an environment in which owning a firearm is seen as a personal freedom. Almost half of U.S. households have reported owning at least one firearm and 43 percent of registered voters in the U.S. were found to believe that it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, compared to 23 percent who said it was more important to limit gun ownership.

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was 363.8 cases per 100,000 of the population. Even though the violent crime rate has been decreasing since 1990, the United States tops the ranking of countries with the most prisoners. In addition, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime reports, data may not accurately reflect the total number of crimes committed in recent years. Reported violent crime rate in the United States The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks the rate of reported violent crimes per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. In the timeline above, rates are shown starting in 1990. The rate of reported violent crime has fallen since a high of 758.20 reported crimes in 1991 to a low of 363.6 reported violent crimes in 2014. In 2023, there were around 1.22 million violent crimes reported to the FBI in the United States. This number can be compared to the total number of property crimes, roughly 6.41 million that year. Of violent crimes in 2023, aggravated assaults were the most common offenses in the United States, while homicide offenses were the least common. Law enforcement officers and crime clearance Though the violent crime rate was down in 2013, the number of law enforcement officers also fell. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of law enforcement officers in the United States rose from around 673,100 to 708,800. However, since 2009, the number of officers fell to a low of 626,900 officers in 2013. The number of law enforcement officers has since grown, reaching 720,652 in 2023. In 2023, the crime clearance rate in the U.S. was highest for murder and non-negligent manslaughter charges, with around 57.8 percent of murders being solved by investigators and a suspect being charged with the crime. Additionally, roughly 46.1 percent of aggravated assaults were cleared in that year. A statistics report on violent crime in the U.S. can be found here.

Notes for publication The table presented is based on the data from the Police Crime Statistics (PKS) of the State of Schleswig-Holstein. These are the results of the police investigation before handing them over to the public prosecutor's office or the court. The PKS contains the illegal offences that have become known to the police, including the attempts threatened with punishment, the number of suspects identified and a number of other information on cases, victims or suspects. The data refer to a closed reporting year and are published annually for the previous calendar year. ##Table specific: Table 1 (basic table) This dataset contains basic data on the offences, broken down by offences and groups of offences, which were recorded in Schleswig-Holstein in the corresponding reporting year. ##Structure of the table The following columns are included: - Key number of the offence - Crime key number (key of the respective offences or sum key) - Offence - plain text of the offence or the sum key - Cases - Number of cases -% share of all offences - Share of total number of offences - Experiments - Number of experiments - Trials in % - Percentage of trials in total cases - Crime scene - Number of cases by crime scene size classes - With a firearm - Number of cases where a firearm was threatened or fired - Cases resolved during the reporting period - Number of cases resolved - Percentage of cases solved - Percentage of cases solved - Total number of suspects identified - Total number of suspects identified - Male - Number of male suspects - Female - Number of female suspects - Non-German suspects - Number of non-German suspects including percentage of total suspects - The preceding number in brackets (1) - (19) denotes the column numbering. Character set: Western European (Windows – 1252/WinLatin 1)

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

In 2023, the number of crimes committed in Singapore for every 100,000 individuals was 1,188. This was a ten-year high, and mostly due to the increase in scams and cybercrimes cases. Low crime rates in Singapore Singapore has a reputation for being one of the safest cities in the world. Violent crime in Singapore is rare – as of 2021, such crimes accounted for nine per 100 thousand population. One reason for this could be the harsh penalties for offenders, as well as a strict ban on weapons for those not in law enforcement. Singapore still carries out capital punishment for crimes such as murder and the illegal possession of firearms carry the death penalty. Increase in commercial crime The most common type of crime committed in Singapore were commercial crimes, especially scams. As Singaporeans carry out more aspects of everyday life online, so too are criminals looking to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. In 2021, scams involving e-commerce transactions were the most common of such crimes. These typically involve the fraudulent sale of products on C2C commercial sites, which are harder to track. Such scams, however, usually involve smaller amounts of money, unlike investment scams. These involve targeting individuals and tricking them into wiring large sums of money for supposed financial investments. In 2021, individuals in Singapore who fell victim to such scams were cheated out of around 191 million Singapore dollars.