The math of 50 years of mass shootingsBy Bonnie Berkowitz, Lazaro Gamio, Denise Lu,
Kevin Uhrmacher and Todd Lindeman
Updated Oct. 2, 2017. Originally published in December 2015.
There is no universally accepted definition of a mass shooting, and different organizations use different criteria. In this piece we look at the deadliest mass shootings, beginning Aug. 1, 1966, when ex-Marine sniper Charles Whitman killed his wife and mother, then climbed a 27-story tower at the University of Texas and killed 14 more people before police shot him to death.
The numbers here refer to 131 events in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (or two shooters in three cases). An average of eight people died during each event, often including the shooters.947 victimsEach gun was used to kill an average of four people, not counting shooters. The 947 people came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background, and 145 were children or teenagers.
258 gunsShooters brought an average of four weapons to each shooting; the Las Vegas music festival shooter had at least 10. We don’t know how all the guns were acquired, but of the ones we know, 141 were obtained legally and 39 were obtained illegally.
134 shootersAll but three of the mass shooters were male; the vast majority were age 20 to 49. More than half — 75 of them — died at or near the scene of the shooting, often by killing themselves.
40 states and the DistrictTwenty-seven percent of the mass shootings occurred in workplaces, and 1 in 8 took place at schools. Others took place in religious, military, retail and restaurant or other locations. California has had more mass shootings than any other state, with 21. While some locations have simply become shorthand for the tragedies that occurred there, others have added tragic phrases to the national vocabulary.
A small percentage of total gun deathsPeople killed in mass shootings make up less than half of 1 percent of the people shot to death in the United States. More than half of gun deaths every year are suicides. In 2015, more than 12,000 people have been killed by guns, according to the Gun Violence Archive.