THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON APRIL 5

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.

Analysis of ‘US Mass Shootings ’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/zusmani/us-mass-shootings-last-50-years on 12 November 2021.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Context

Mass Shootings in the United States of America (1966-2017) The US has witnessed 398 mass shootings in last 50 years that resulted in 1,996 deaths and 2,488 injured. The latest and the worst mass shooting of October 2, 2017 killed 58 and injured 515 so far. The number of people injured in this attack is more than the number of people injured in all mass shootings of 2015 and 2016 combined. The average number of mass shootings per year is 7 for the last 50 years that would claim 39 lives and 48 injured per year.

Content

Geography: United States of America

Time period: 1966-2017

Unit of analysis: Mass Shooting Attack

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

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

Acknowledgements

I’ve consulted several public datasets and web pages to compile this data. Some of the major data sources include Wikipedia, Mother Jones, Stanford, USA Today and other web sources.

Inspiration

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

• How many people got killed and injured per year?

• Visualize mass shootings on the U.S map

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

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

• What cities and states are more prone to such attacks

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

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

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

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 3

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

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

Age, Employed and Employed at (3 variables) contain shooter details

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 4

Quite a few missing values have been added

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 5

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

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

Keep Coding!

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Context

Mass Shootings in the United States of America (1966-2017) The US has witnessed 398 mass shootings in last 50 years that resulted in 1,996 deaths and 2,488 injured. The latest and the worst mass shooting of October 2, 2017 killed 58 and injured 515 so far. The number of people injured in this attack is more than the number of people injured in all mass shootings of 2015 and 2016 combined. The average number of mass shootings per year is 7 for the last 50 years that would claim 39 lives and 48 injured per year.

Content

Geography: United States of America

Time period: 1966-2017

Unit of analysis: Mass Shooting Attack

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

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

Acknowledgements

I’ve consulted several public datasets and web pages to compile this data. Some of the major data sources include Wikipedia, Mother Jones, Stanford, USA Today and other web sources.

Inspiration

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

• How many people got killed and injured per year?

• Visualize mass shootings on the U.S map

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

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

• What cities and states are more prone to such attacks

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

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

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

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 3

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

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

Age, Employed and Employed at (3 variables) contain shooter details

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 4

Quite a few missing values have been added

Mass Shootings Dataset Ver 5

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

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

Keep Coding!

Dataset

This dataset was created by Frzt

Contents

The purpose of this project is to provide data about mass shootings in the United States in order to help all interested parties visualize and analyze mass shootings that have happened over the past few decades. This story map compares the Brady Scorecard for the Prevention of Gun Violence to mass shooting prevalence and mental health spending per state. It is hoped that in doing so it will be easier to look for patterns that will lead to effective solutions to prevent further tragedies from occurring.We use the following definition in order to identify a mass shooting incident: A mass shooting incident involves an active shooter who shot 3 or more people in a single event.

The database begins with the 1966 mass shooting event at the University of Texas at Austin, which resulted in a staggering 16 victim fatalities and 32 wounded by gunshot. The timing of the event allowed us to create a more comprehensive database, and its occurrence on school grounds made it an obvious starting place for the project, as it was conceived after the devastating events of shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The database is not yet complete and we continue to collect incident data as they arise.Credit: Felicia Bill, GIS Specialist, Stanford Geospatial Center

In 2023, number of mass shootings for Indiana was 2,762 cases. Though Indiana number of mass shootings fluctuated substantially in recent years, it tended to increase through 2014 - 2023 period ending at 2,762 cases in 2023.

#

Why is this dataset here?

I created this dataset after reviewing several mass shooting projects on data.world and seeing most of the datasets contained dirty data which made scripting a little more difficult for the average person. I created my own project so my scripts will continue to work as designed and the dataset doesn't get stale or deleted.

Why the Mothers dataset? They keep it well maintained, updated, available online, clearly show sources, and follow the standard of 3 deaths to qualify as a mass shooting. Standards are very important to have accurate and valuable data it also helps that Mother Jones keeps this dataset current by adding new records.

The Codeholics Edition uses the Mother Jones dataset as the base and cleans the data so values are consistent. The source links provided by Mother Jones are used to clarify ambiguous values and additional creditable sources are added only if absolutely required to validate the data.

Background

I am a data hobbyist and professional for over 20 years, mostly contributing for team Codeholics.com.

Sources

• Obtained data from: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
• Direct link to the original Spreadsheet
• Updates are provided once I am notified of an updated dataset and still being maintained [2023]. # Modified Data Automated dataset download and cleaning with PowerShell so data is handled in a consistent and transparent fashion. You can view the source code used and all artifacts by visiting our project page on Github.

https://github.com/Codeholics/US-Mass-Shootings

SQL Scripts

• Average Age
• How Mental Health Plays A Role
• Location Type
• Mental Health Depression
• Shooting Locations
• Shootings per year
• Number of times a weapon was used in a mass shooting
• Weapon combos used

You can find an updated Statistics.md document located in our Github project. Source: Statistics.md

@ - Statistics - General Statistics - Shootings Per Year - Location Type - Location City - Location State - Shooters with Mental Health Issues - Number of Times a Weapon Type is Used in a Mass Shooting - Weapon Combos

Statistics

General Statistics

• Total Number of Shootings: 149
• Average Age of Shooters: 34.006711409396
• Age Range: 11 - 72
• Shooters with Depression: 8
• Worst Year: 2023 with 12 shootings
• Worst State: California with 26 shootings | 17.4496644295302%
• Worst City: Colorado Springs, Colorado with 3 shootings | 2.01%
• Victims: 1149 fatalities and 1628 injuries
• Shooters with Mental Health Issues: 73 | 48.993288590604%
• Most Common Location Type: Other with 58 shootings | 38.93%
• Most Used Weapon: semiautomatic_handgun with 101 shootings | 67.79%
• Most Used Weapon Combos: One semiautomatic handgun with 42 shootings | 80.7692307692308%
• Military or Government Training: 18 | 12.0805369127517%

Shootings Per Year

year	YearCount	Victims	VictimsPerShooting	YearCountPercentage
2018	12	150	12	30.7692307692308
2022	12	178	14	30.7692307692308
2023	12	140	11	30.7692307692308
2017	11	704	64	28.2051282051282
2019	10	185	18	25.6410256410256
2012	7	151	21	17.9487179487179
2015	7	89	12	17.9487179487179
2016	6	154	25	15.3846153846154
2021	6	59	9	15.3846153846154
1999	5	89	17	12.8205128205128
2013	5	48	9	12.8205128205128
1993	4	57	14	10.2564102564103
2007	4	85	21	10.2564102564103
2009	4	78	19	10.2564102564103
2014	4	46	11	10.2564102564103
1991	3	61	20	7.69230769230769
1998	3	50	16	7.69230769230769
2006	3	28	9	7.69230769230769
2008	3	41	13	7.69230769230769
2011	3	40	13	7.69230769230769
1984	2	48	24	5.12820512820513
1989	2	56	28	5.12820512820513
1992	2	19	9	5.12820512820513
1997	2	14	7	5.12820512820513
2005	2	26	13	5.12820512820513
2020	2	9	4	5.12820512820513
1982	1	11	11	2.56410256410256
1986	1	21	21	2.56410256410256
1987	1	20	20	2.56410256410256
1988	1	11	11	2.56410256410256
1990	1	14	14	2.56410256410256
1994	1	28	28	2.56410256410256
1995	1	6	6	2.56410256410256
1996	1	7	7	2.56410256410256
2000	1	7	7	2.56410256410256
2001	1	9	9	2.56410256410256
2003	1	15	15	2.56410256410256
2004	1	12	12	2.56410256410256
2010	1	11	11	2.56410256410256

Location Type

location_2	Count	Percentage
Other	58	38.93
Workplace	53	35.57
School	23	15.44
Religious	8	5.37
Military	6	4.03
Airport	1	0.67

Location City

location	Shootings	Victims	VictimsPerShooting	ShootingPercentage
Colorado Springs, Colorado	3	45	15	2.01
Atlanta, Georgia	2	31	15	1.34
Aurora, Colorado	2	87	43	1.34
Dallas, Texas	2	23	11	1.34
Fort Hood, Texas	2	59	29	1.34
Fort Lauderdale, Florida	2	18	9	1.34
Jacksonville, Florida	2	17	8	1.34
Las Vegas, Nevada	2	608	304	1.34
Louisville, Kentucky	2	34	17	1.34
Nashville, Tennessee	2	20	10	1.34
Orange, California	2	12	6	1.34
Orlando, Florida	2	107	53	1.34
San Francisco, California	2	20	10	1.34
Seattle, Washington	2	16	8	1.34
Aiken, South Carolina	1	7	7	0.67
Allen, Texas	1	15	15	0.67
Alturas, California	1	6	6	0.67
Annapolis, Maryland	1	7	7	0.67
Aurora, Illinois	1	11	11	0.67
Bakersfield, California	1	5	5	0.67
Baton Rouge, Lousiana	1	6	6	0.67
Binghamton, New York	1	18	18	0.67
Birmingham, Alabama	1	3	3	0.67
Blacksburg, Virginia	1	55	55	0.67
Boulder, Colorado	1	10	10	0.67
Brookfield, Wisconsin	1	11	11	0.67
Buffalo, New York	1	13	13	0.67
Burlington, Washington	1	5	5	0.67
Carson City, Nevada	1	12	12	0.67
Carthage, North Carolina	1	11	11	0.67
Charleston, South Carolina	1	10	10	0.67
Charlottesville, Virginia	1	5	5	0.67
Chattanooga, Tennessee	1	7	7	0.67
Chesapeake, Virginia	1	12	12	0.67
Chicago, Illinois	1	3	3	0.67
Cincinnati, Ohio	1	5	5	0.67
Columbus, Ohio	1	12	12	0.67
Corpus Christi, Texas	1	6	6	0.67
Crandon, Wisconsin	1	7	7	0.67
Dayton, Ohio	1	36	36	0.67
DeKalb, Illinois	1	26	26	0.67
East Lansing, Michigan	1	8	8	0.67
Edgewood, Maryland	1	6	6	0.67
Edmond, Oklahoma	1	21	21	0.67
El Paso, Texas	1	48	48	0.67
Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington	1	28	28	0.67
Farmington, New Mexico	1	9	9	0.67
Fayetteville, North Carolina	1	12	12	0.67
Federal Way, Washington	1	5	5	0.67
Fort Worth, Texas	1	15	15	0.67
Fresno, California	1	3	3	0.67
Garden City, New York	1	25	25	0.67
Gilroy, California	1	15	15	0.67
Goleta, California	1	8	8	0.67
Greenwood, Indiana	1	5	5	0.67
Half Moon Bay, California	1	8	8	0.67
Hedingham, North Carolina	1	7	7	0.67
Henderson, Kentucky	1	7	7	0.67
Herkimer County, New York	1	7	7	0.67
Hesston, Kansas	1	17	17	0.67
Hialeah, Florida	1	7	7	0.67
Highland Park, Illinois	1	53	53	0.67
Honolulu, Hawaii	1	7	7	0.67
Indianapolis, Indiana	1	15	15	0.67
Iowa City, Iowa	1	7	7	0.67
Jersey City, New Jersey	1	7	7	0.67
Jonesboro, Arkansas	1	15	15	0.67
Kalamazoo County, Michigan	1	8	8	0.67
Killeen, Texas	1	44	44	0.67
Kirkersville, Ohio	1	3	3	0.67
Kirkwood, Missouri	1	8	8	0.67
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania	1	11	11	0.67
Lewiston, Maine	1	31	31	0.67
Littleton, Colorado	1	37	37	0.67
Manchester, Connecticut	1	11	11	0.67
Marysville, Washington	1	6	6	0.67
Melcroft, Pennsylvania	1	5	5	0.67
Melrose Park, Illinois	1	9	9	0.67
Menasha, Wisconsin	1	4	4	0.67
Meridian, Mississippi	1	15	15	0.67
Miami, Florida	1	11	11	0.67
Milwaukee, Wisconsin	1	5	5	0.67
Minneapolis, Minnesota	1	8	8	0.67
Monterey Park, California	1	21	21	0.67
Newington, Connecticut	1	6	6	0.67
Newtown, Connecticut	1	29	29	0.67
Norcross, Georgia	1	5	5	0.67
Oak Creek, Wisconsin	1	10	10	0.67
Oakland, California	1	10	10	0.67
Odessa, Texas	1	32	32	0.67
Olivehurst, California	1	14	14	0.67
Omaha, Nebraska	1	13	13	0.67
Oxford,

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

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

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.

Content

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.).

Acknowledgements

Thanks Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and motherjones.com team for your contribution and wish everyone all the best.

Editor’s note: This dataset originally covered 1982-2012 and has since been expanded through 2017. For full context and analysis on this data, see our Guide to Mass Shootings in America.

In 2021, number of killed in mass shootings for Alaska was 366 persons. Number of killed in mass shootings of Alaska increased from 0 persons in 2014 to 366 persons in 2021 growing at an average annual rate of 80.00%.

In 2023, number of killed in mass shootings for California was 5,962 persons. Though California number of killed in mass shootings fluctuated substantially in recent years, it tended to increase through 2014 - 2023 period ending at 5,962 persons in 2023.

In 2023, number of killed in mass shootings for Utah was 1,147 persons. Though Utah number of killed in mass shootings fluctuated substantially in recent years, it tended to decrease through 2013 - 2023 period ending at 1,147 persons in 2023.

While public debate over gun control in the United States has often hinged on individual public mass shooting incidents, legislative action should be informed by knowledge of the long-term evolution of these events. We present a new Bayesian model for the annualized rate of public mass shootings in the United States based on a Gaussian process with a time-varying mean function. While we present specific findings on long- and short-term trends of these shootings in the U.S., our focus is on understanding the role of model design and prior information in policy analysis. Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo inference technique, we explore the posterior consequences of different prior choices and explore correlations between hyperparameters. We demonstrate that the findings about the long-term evolution of the annualized rate of public mass shootings are robust to choices about prior information, while inferences about the timescale and amplitude of short-term variation depend sensitively on the prior. This work addresses the policy implications of implicit and explicit choices of prior information in model design and the utility of full Bayesian inference in evaluating the consequences of those choices.

These data sets contain data extracted from Mother Jones website and Google searching services.

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

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.

Dataset

This dataset was created by Denis Afonin

Released under CC0: Public Domain

Contents

Dataset

This dataset was created by Charles Saint Jean

Contents