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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.
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.
To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:
To get these counts just for your state:
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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
Quite a few missing values have been added
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!
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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.
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!
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
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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.
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TwitterAs 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.
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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.
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List of the most notable mass shootings in the United States that have occurred since 1920. Only shootings that have Wikipedia articles of their own are included in this list. Detailed lists of mass shootings can be found per year at their respective pages. Larger documentation of mass shootings in the United States has occurred through independent and scholarly studies such as the Stanford University Mass Shootings in America Data Project: https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america
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One can easily find postings, articles, etc… in social network about mass shooting, gun violence, it's frequency, impacts, severity, and so on. However, one might be curious in its details of what the root causes are? where are common incident areas? Are those shooters mostly have mental health problem or some kind of severe psycho as everyone has mentioned about? What are those shooters features? How are their behaviors, age range, race, etc? or is there any correlational relationships between those features that helps us understand more about them and their motives? By having more insight of US Mass shooting cases, its common root cause, features of shooter and other related aspects, it might help every single individual to recognize sign of a mass shooter or can even have solutions on education, mental balance support, and obligation for preventing such tragedy to contribute to a better healthier society. For my world fellow friends, hope you all have a quality data source for your references, analysis and learning.
This data covers raw data of mass shooting cases in US from 1966-2019. In fact it does not cover all cases but it gives analyst/ viewer a general viewpoint of gun violence situation in US. For my analysis on this data please find in links below: • US Mass Shooting 1: Overview Analysis and Root Cause 1966-2019 • US Mass Shooting 1: Shooter’s Analysis 1966-2019
Data structure shown in sheet "Data Structure". Data includes: • Fields: 24 • Rows: 339 (339 cases) • Data coverage: partial (not included all mass shooting cases but typical ones) data from 1966-2019 • Cleaned: Yes • Data cleaning procedure: click here • Original data source: (1) https://www.kaggle.com/zusmani/us-mass-shootings-last-50-years?select=Mass+Shootings+Dataset.csv , (2) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ • Original data problems: Missing data, duplicate data, null data, partial or incomplete data (incomplete location name, missing latitude, longtitude, etc.), incorrect information (number of victims, etc.).
Thanks Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and motherjones.com team for your contribution and wish everyone all the best.
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TwitterNumber 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.
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TwitterThe Washington Post spent a year determining how many children have been affected by school shootings, beyond just those killed or injured. To do that, reporters attempted to identify every act of gunfire at a primary or secondary school during school hours since the Columbine High massacre on April 20, 1999. Using Nexis, news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports, information from school websites, and calls to schools and police departments, The Post reviewed more than 1,000 alleged incidents, but counted only those that happened on campuses immediately before, during or just after classes. Shootings at after-hours events, accidental discharges that caused no injuries to anyone other than the person handling the gun, and suicides that occurred privately or posed no threat to other children were excluded. Gunfire at colleges and universities, which affects young adults rather than kids, also was not counted. After finding more than 200 incidents of gun violence that met The Post’s criteria, reporters organized them in a database for analysis. Because the federal government does not track school shootings, it’s possible that the database does not contain every incident that would qualify. To calculate how many children were exposed to gunfire in each school shooting, The Post relied on enrollment figures and demographic information from the U.S. Education Department, including the Common Core of Data and the Private School Universe Survey. The analysis used attendance figures from the year of the shooting for the vast majority of the schools. Credits: Research and Reporting: John Woodrow Cox, Steven Rich and Allyson Chiu Production and Presentation: John Muyskens and Monica Ulmanu Per the terms of the Creative Commons license, CISER notes that: 1. the license for this dataset is attached as the files license.htm and license.pdf. A brief version of the Creative Commons license is also included but users should familiarize themselves with the full license before using. 2. the licensed material is located at https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings 3. Several of the files have been modified from the format presented at the above url including creating pdf versions of the documentation files and adding SAS, Stata, and SPSS versions through the use of StatTransfer 13. 4. These adapted versions of the original files are also released through the same Creative Commons license as the original with the same license elements.
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TwitterMass shootings in the state of Virginia have resulted in a significant human toll. A total of 36 victims have lost their lives, representing the most tragic consequence of these violent events. Each life lost is a story cut short and a family left in grief, underscoring the urgent need for preventive measures and public awareness.In addition to those killed, 75 individuals have been injured as a result of these shootings. These injuries range from minor wounds to life-altering conditions, many of which require long-term medical care and emotional recovery. The ripple effects extend beyond the victims themselves, affecting families, communities, and public safety systems.Among the injured, 1 person was reported to be in critical condition, highlighting the severity and unpredictability of the violence involved in such incidents. Critical injuries often lead to complex recovery paths and place a heavy burden on both healthcare providers and the families involved.
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The Stanford Mass Shootings in America (MSA) is a dataset released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international license by the Stanford Geospatial Center. While not an exhaustive collection of mass shootings, it is a high-quality dataset ranging from 1966 to 2016 with well-defined methodology, definitions and source URLs for user validation.
This dataset can be used to validate other datasets, such as us-mass-shootings-last-50-years, which contains more recent data, or conduct other analysis, as more information is provided.
This dataset contains data by the MSA project both from it's website and from it's Github account. The difference between the two sources is only on the data format (i.e. .csv versus .geojson for the data, or .csv versus .pdf for the dictionary).
Note the data was reproduced here without any modifications other than file renaming for clarity, the content is the same as in the source.
The following sections are reproduced from the dataset creators website. For more details, please see the source.
The Stanford Mass Shootings of America (MSA) data project began in 2012, in reaction to the mass shooting in Sandy Hook, CT. In our initial attempts to map this phenomena it was determined that no comprehensive collection of these incidents existed online. The Stanford Geospatial Center set out to create, as best we could, a single point repository for as many mass shooting events as could be collected via online media. The result was the Stanford MSA.
The Stanford MSA is a data aggregation effort. It is a curated set of spatial and temporal data about mass shootings in America, taken from online media sources. It is an attempt to facilitate research on gun violence in the US by making raw data more accessible.
The Stanford MSA is not a comprehensive, longitudinal research project. The data collected in the MSA are not investigated past the assessment for inclusion in the database. The MSA is not an attempt to answer specific questions about gun violence or gun laws.
The Stanford Geospatial Center does not provide analysis or commentary on the contents of this database or any derivatives produced with it.
The information collected for the Stanford MSA is limited to online resources. An initial intensive investigation was completed looking back over existing online reports to fill in the historic record going back to 1966. Contemporary records come in as new events occur and are cross referenced against a number of online reporting sources. In general a minimum of three corroborating sources are required to add the full record into the MSA (as many as 6 or 7 sources may have been consulted in many cases). All sources for each event are listed in the database.
Due to the time involved in vetting the details of any new incident, there is often a 2 to 4 week lag between a mass shooting event and its inclusion in the public release database.
It is important to note the records in the Stanford MSA span a time from well before the advent of online media reporting, through its infancy, to the modern era of web based news and information resources. Researchers using this database need to be aware of the reporting bias these changes in technology present. A spike in incidents for recent years is likely due to increased online reporting and not necessarily indicative of the rate of mass shootings alone. Researchers should look at this database as a curated collection of quality checked data regarding mass shootings, and not an exhaustive research data set itself. Independent verification and analysis will be required to use this data in examining trends in mass shootings over time.
The definition of mass shooting used for the Stanford database is 3 or more shooting victims (not necessarily fatalities), not including the shooter. The shooting must not be identifiably gang, drug, or organized crime related.
The Stanford Mass Shootings in America (MSA) is a dataset released under [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 int...
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TwitterThe 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.
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.
This dataset is owned by the Gun Violence Archive, and can be accessed in its original form here.
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TwitterThis dataset provides an in-depth look at mass shootings across the United States in 2024, up until October 20th, sourced from the Gun Violence Archive. It captures essential details such as incident ID, date, state, city, victims (killed and injured), and suspects involved. Additionally, geographical coordinates are included to allow for spatial analysis of gun violence trends.
This dataset is a comprehensive collection of gun violence incidents, offering insights into both the human toll and geographical spread of mass shootings in 2024. The goal of the analysis is to identify patterns, trends, and areas of concern that can inform public safety measures and policy interventions.
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TwitterIn this paper, we investigate the economic consequences of mass shootings. We find that shootings have negative effects on targeted counties' economies. Estimates using three different comparison groups yield similar results. Examining the mechanisms, we find that residents of targeted areas: (i) develop pessimistic views of financial and local business conditions; and (ii) are more likely to report poor mental health, which hinders usual activities such as work, suggesting that shootings lead to decreases in productivity. Further, we find that greater national media coverage of shootings exacerbates their local economic consequences.
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Firearms are the leading cause of death for minors in the United States and US gun culture is often discussed as a reason behind the prevalence of school shootings. Yet, few studies systematically analyze if there is a connection between the two: Do school shooters show a distinct gun culture? This article studies gun culture in action in school shootings. It studies if school shooters show distinct meanings and practices around firearms prior to the shooting, as well as patterns in access to firearms. To do so, I analyze a full sample of US school shootings. Relying on publicly available court, police, and media data, I combine qualitative in-depth analyses with cross-case comparisons and descriptive statistics. Findings suggest most school shooters come from a social setting in which firearms are a crucial leisure activity and hold meanings of affection, friendship, and bonding. These meanings translate into practices: all school shooters had easy access to the firearms they used for the shooting. Findings contribute to research on firearms and youth violence, public health, as well as the sociology of culture.
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Any other ideas just comment and i'll increase. Thanks!
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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.
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Abstract: KOSVED provides detailed information on the magnitude and location of events of one-sided violence in 20 civil wars. Schneider and Bussmann (2013) describe the data set in detail. Information on the variables can be found in the KOSVED codebook Object: One-sided violence occurs frequently during war. Systematic research on this form of violence, however, only started to emerge since the 1990s. Most existing data sets only include information about the most serious episodes of one-sided violence like mass killings or genocides, or are temporarily or spatially highly aggregated. The KOSVED project offers detailed information about particular instances of one-sided violence. Other: For KOSVED data organized by event, please visit the KOSVED data page: https://cms.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/archive/kosved/polver/gschneider/forschung/kosved/data/index.html. When using KOSVED, please cite the data set article: Schneider, Gerald and Margit Bussmann. 2013. “Accounting for the Dynamics of One-Sided Violence: Introducing KOSVED”. Journal of Peace Research 50: (5) and, if needed, the codebook: Margit Bussmann and Gerald Schneider (with Constantin Ruhe, Adam Scharpf and Roos van der Haer). 2011. Konstanz One-Sided Violence Event Dataset (KOSVED) Codebook. Version 2.0.
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TwitterGun 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
https://www.googleapis.com/download/storage/v1/b/kaggle-user-content/o/inbox%2F13190980%2F56c639fee11c268267f9cf4ece33cf6a%2Fnewplot%20(6).png?generation=1680562776580204&alt=media" alt="">
Data columns:
caselocationdatesummary fatalitiesinjuredtotal_victimslocation.1 age_of_shooterprior_signs_mental_health_issues - Cleanedmental_health_details - Cleanedweapons_obtained_legallywhere_obtained weapon_typeweapon_detailsrace - cleanedgender - cleanedlatitude - filled from location with Google Maps APIlongitude - filled from location with Google Maps APItype year - retrieved from date columnquarter - retrieved from date columnhalf - retrieved from date columnmonth_name - retrieved from date columnday_of_week - retrieved from date columnage_group - "Teenage", "Early Adulthood", "Middle Adulthood", "Old Age"decade - retrieved from datename - retrieved from splitting summarycurrent_age - retrieved from splitting summarydescription - retrieved from splitting summary
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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.
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.
To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:
To get these counts just for your state:
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.
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.
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.