THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON JULY 12

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.

The data on mass shootings is from https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ . This dataset on mass shootings for the period 2014-2023 was provided on Feb 19, 2024 by the Data Manager (Ms. Sharon Williams) at the Gun Violence Archive (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/) on a data request. Minimal curation was done on this data – the date variable was split into year, month and day. See the codebook for full details.A mass shooting is defined as four or more people injured or killed, because of firearms, excluding the shooter.The curated datasets are included here along with a research question and guiding questions.For information of how this data is collected, go to: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/explainerDefinition for mass shooting and mass murder from the above website is given verbatim below:Mass Shooting Methodology and Reasoning: Mass Shootings are, for the most part an American phenomenon. While they are generally grouped together as one type of incident they are several different types including public shootings, bar/club incidents, family annihilations, drive-by, workplace and those which defy description but with the established foundation definition being that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident. GVA also presents the count of Mass Murder which, like the FBI's definition is four or more victims, killed, not including the shooter. Mass Murder by gun is a subset of the Mass Shooting count.

Gun ownership in the United States is the highest in the world, and constitutionally protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Firearms are widely used in the United States for self-defence, hunting, and recreational uses, such as target shooting.

Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/nidzsharma/us-mass-shootings-19822023

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Data columns:

• 0 case
• 1 location
• 2 date
• 3 summary
• 4 fatalities
• 5 injured
• 6 total_victims
• 7 location.1
• 8 age_of_shooter
• 9 prior_signs_mental_health_issues - Cleaned
• 10 mental_health_details - Cleaned
• 11 weapons_obtained_legally
• 12 where_obtained
• 13 weapon_type
• 14 weapon_details
• 15 race - cleaned
• 16 gender - cleaned
• 17 latitude - filled from location with Google Maps API
• 18 longitude - filled from location with Google Maps API
• 19 type
• 20 year - retrieved from date column
• 21 quarter - retrieved from date column
• 22 half - retrieved from date column
• 23 month_name - retrieved from date column
• 24 day_of_week - retrieved from date column
• 25 age_group - "Teenage", "Early Adulthood", "Middle Adulthood", "Old Age"
• 26 decade - retrieved from date
• 27 name - retrieved from splitting summary
• 28 current_age - retrieved from splitting summary
• 29 description - retrieved from splitting summary

Mass shootings are becoming a more common occurrence in the United States. Data show that mass shootings increased steadily over the past nearly 50 years. Crucial is that the wide-ranging adverse effects of mass shootings generate negative mental health outcomes on millions of Americans, including fear, anxiety, and ailments related to such afflictions. This study extends previous research that finds a strong positive relationship between income inequality and mass shootings by examining the effect of household income as well as the interaction between inequality and income. To conduct our analyses, we compile a panel dataset with information across 3,144 counties during the years 1990 to 2015. Mass shootings was measured using a broad definition of three or more victim injuries. Income inequality was calculated using the post-tax version of the Gini coefficient. Our results suggest that while inequality and income alone are both predictors of mass shootings, their impacts on mass shootings are stronger when combined via interaction. Specifically, the results indicate areas with the highest number of mass shootings are those that combine both high levels of inequality and high levels of income. Additionally, robustness checks incorporating various measures of mass shootings and alternative regression techniques had analogous results. Our findings suggest that to address the mass shootings epidemic at its core, it is essential to understand how to stem rising income inequality and the unstable environments that we argue are created by such inequality.

Context

The Gun Violence Archive is an online archive of gun violence incidents collected from over 2,000 media, law enforcement, government and commercial sources daily in an effort to provide near-real time data about the results of gun violence. GVA in an independent data collection and research group with no affiliation with any advocacy organization.

Content

This dataset includes files that separate gun violence incidents by category, including deaths and injuries of children and teens, and a collection of mass shootings.

Inspiration

• What has been the trend of gun violence in the past few years?
• What states have the highest incidents per capita per year? How has this metric changed over time?
• Are officer involved shootings on the rise? Where are they most concentrated? Do they correlate with the rates of accidental deaths and mass shootings?

Acknowledgements

This dataset is owned by the Gun Violence Archive, and can be accessed in its original form here.

As of June 19, 116 school shooting incidents were recorded in K-12 schools in the United States in 2025. Within the provided time period, the greatest number of K-12 school shootings was recorded in 2023, at 350. The source defines a school shooting as every time a gun is brandished, fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims (including zero), time, day or the week, or reason, including gang shootings, domestic violence, shootings at sports games and after hours school events, suicides, fights that escalate into shootings, and accidents.

IntroductionFor over two decades school shootings have become a significant concern, especially in the United States. Following a rampage school shooting, extensive resources are devoted to gathering all of the information surrounding the event. To date, few studies have compared completed to averted, or near-miss, school shootings. This study utilized the largest known sample of cases based in the United States in an effort to identify potential targets for prevention.MethodData were derived from the Averted School Violence database of incidents occurring between 1999 and 2020. Statistical analyses were conducted to determine how age, co-conspirator involvement, engagement in leakage warning behavior, and motives – in isolation and in combination – varied between groups.ResultsIn insolation, age, co-conspirator involvement, engagement in leakage warning behaviors, and motives were significantly different between groups. However, when these variables were combined into a logistic regression, co-conspirator involvement, engagement in leakage warning behaviors, and motives involving suicidal intent emerged as statistically significant predictors of group membership. Age no longer differentiated the two types of events.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that regardless of suspect age, threats of school violence must be taken seriously and investigated fully. Further, students reporting their peers’ engagement in shooting-related behaviors (e.g., bringing a gun to school, mapping school, etc.) was one of the most significant predictors that a plot will be thwarted. While perpetrators who planned with others had increased odds of their plot being identified, those acting alone still demonstrated leakage behaviors. If individuals in the school environment are educated regarding warning behaviors, lone perpetrators can still be identified and reported to authorities. The perpetrator’s emotional distress, in particular depressive or suicidal thoughts were also a significant predictor of a completed school shooting. Future research efforts should focus on the development and evaluation of peer training programs to assist in the detection of school shooting warning behaviors.

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.

Context

I often hear my fellow Americans say things like "There's no way I'm going to Europe given all of the terrorism" despite living in a country with mass shootings on a nearly daily basis. I was curious as to what the facts said - are Americans in more danger from other Americans vs Europeans from terrorists. This is the dataset for the terror half of the question.

Content

This dataset contains information about worldwide terrorism events back to 1970, including location, circumstances, number of casualties, weapons used, etc. For a full description reference the codebook: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/downloads/Codebook.pdf

Acknowledgements

This open-source dataset is provided courtesy of the University of Maryland START (https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/).

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2016). Global Terrorism Database [Data file]. Retrieved from https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd

Inspiration

Besides comparing to US gun violence, I'd like to correlate terrorism in countries/regions with other factors (economics, internet spread, etc.).