Giving Compass' Take:
- David Eads, Anna Flagg, Anastasia Valeeva, and Wendy Ruderman break down data showing that mass shootings are increasingly occurring in the U.S., leaving a larger number of victims.
- What role can you play in supporting communities impacted by mass shootings?
- Learn about the collective trauma left by mass shootings.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
If it feels like U.S. mass shootings have become more frequent, that intuition remains correct, according to data analysis by The Marshall Project.
Under even one of the most conservative definitions of “mass shootings,” in which a gunman slaughters four or more strangers in a public place, the number of these crimes has indeed been climbing in the last few years — and they have higher death tolls, as well.
Mass shootings account for just a fraction of the daily toll of firearm deaths in the U.S., where about 132 people died every day in acts of gun violence in 2022.
Our analysis is based on data through 2022 from The Violence Project, a nonprofit research group that uses a narrow definition of mass shootings adopted from the Congressional Research Service, which advises federal lawmakers.
As mass shootings in the U.S. reached a record high, so did the number of deaths and injuries. From 2018 to 2022, perpetrators killed 257 people — close to the 266 fatalities in the five-year period that ended in 2017, and significantly more than any previous period.
Read the full article about mass shooting data by David Eads, Anna Flagg, Anastasia Valeeva, and Wendy Ruderman at The Marshall Project.