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- For the purposes of tracking crime data, the FBI defines a "mass shooting" as any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun.
www.ojp.gov › ncjrs › virtual-libraryAnalysis of Recent Mass Shootings | Office of Justice Programs
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Generally, mass murder was described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders.
4he federal definition of “mass killing” is defined as “three or more killings in a single incident.” Derived from Investigative T Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, 28 USC § 530C ...
- A Troubling Upward Trend
- The Study Design
- Other Key Findings and Applicability
- Mass Shooting Demographics
- Interviews
- Other Limitations
- About This Article
The research examined an era of marked increase in the number and deadly effect of mass shootings in the United States. To summarize that trend: 1. The project spanned mass shootings over more than 50 years, yet 20% of the 167 mass shootings in that period occurred in the last five years of the study period. 2. More than half occurred after 2000, o...
The research adopted a mixed method approach combining objective, or readily quantified, data, to populate the database and the interviews of the small sample of persons in prison who had committed mass shootings. The database, as well as a detailed study methodology and research codebook, are available at www.theviolenceproject.org(link is externa...
Trauma, Suicidality, and Crisis
Suicidality was found to be a strong predictor of perpetration of mass shootings. Of all mass shooters in the The Violence Project database, 30% were suicidal prior to the shooting. An additional 39% were suicidal during the shooting. Those numbers were significantly higher for younger shooters, with K-12 students who engaged in mass shootings found to be suicidal in 92% of instances and college/university students who engaged in mass shooting suicidal 100% of the time. In terms of past traum...
Crisis / Mental Illness
In public discourse, mass shootings are often blamed on mental illness. But the research indicates the role of mental illness in mass shootings is complicated, not clear-cut. Mental health issues were common among those who engaged in mass shootings, with psychosis playing a minor role in nearly one third of the cases, but a primary role 10% of the time. The data indicate, however, that nearly all persons who engage in mass shootings were in state of crisis in the days or weeks preceding the...
Warning Signs — Leakage
Nearly half of individuals who engaged in mass shootings (48%) leaked their plans in advance to others, including family members, friends, and colleagues, as well as strangers and law enforcement officers. Legacy tokens, such as manifestos, were left behind by 23.4% of those who committed mass shootings. About 70% of individuals who perpetrated mass shooting knew at least some of their victims. In particular, K-12 school and workplace shooters were “insiders” — current or former students and...
Of the 172 individuals who engaged in public mass shootings covered in the database, 97.7% were male. Ages ranged from 11 to 70, with a mean age of 34.1. Those shooting were 52.3% White, 20.9% Black, 8.1% Latino, 6.4% Asian, 4.2% Middle Eastern, and 1.8% Native American. Most individuals who perpetrated mass shootings had a prior criminal record (6...
The research team cautioned that the qualitative data, from five interviews, did not lend themselves to generalization, because each individual’s story is unique. There was no single profile of a person who engaged in a mass shooting, but the interviewed mass shooters shared the following traits: 1. Early childhood trauma and exposure to violence. ...
The database used open source data, leaving room for bias, the researchers noted, because the source data were originally gathered for different purposes. Media outlets have their own biases, in terms of coverage of different mass shootings. Generally, the report noted, certain categories of mass shootings tended to attract the most coverage. They ...
The research described in this article was funded by NIJ award 2018-75-CX-0023, awarded to Hamline University. This article is based on the grantee report “A Multi-Level, Multi-Method Investigation of the Psycho-Social Life Histories of Mass Shooters,” September 2021, by project’s Principal Investigator, Jillian Peterson. The Co-Principal Investiga...
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines murder and nonnegligent manslaughter as the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another. The classification of this...
Apr 15, 2021 · The FBI classification of mass murderer was established primarily with the aim of clarifying criminal profiling procedures (Ressler, Burgess, and Douglas, 1988), and the congressional definition was intended to clarify statutory authority for the provision of U.S. Department of Justice investigatory assistance requested by state and local agenci...
Jan 26, 2024 · Mass murder, the killing of three or more people (that is not legally justified or excusable) in a single incident at a single location, as defined by U.S. federal law. Mass murder differs from serial murder, which is the killing of two or more people over a period of time. Mass murderers kill.
Oct 16, 2023 · FBI Releases 2022 Crime in the Nation Statistics. The FBI released detailed data on over 11 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, largely...