A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
There have been at least 62 in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.
| Updated: Sat Dec. 15, 2012 11:45 AM PST
It is perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5, another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis on September 27—and then the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school
on December 14—are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over
the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass
shootings*
across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from
Massachusetts to Hawaii. Twenty-five of these mass shootings have
occurred since 2006, and seven of them took place in 2012. We've mapped
them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of
weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed.
The killers: Half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (12 and 19, respectively); the other 31 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, and religious and government buildings. Forty four of the killers were white males. Only one of them was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) The average age of the killers was 35, though the youngest among them was a mere 11 years old. (See Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998.) A majority were mentally ill—and many displayed signs of it before setting out to kill. Explore the map for further details—we do not consider it to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used we believe that we've produced the most comprehensive rundown available on this particular type of violence. (Mass shootings represent only a sliver of America's overall gun violence.) For a timeline listing all the cases on the map, including photos of the killers, jump to page 2. For the stories of the 151 shooting rampage victims of 2012, click here, and for all of MoJo's year-long investigation into gun laws and mass shootings, click here.
Hover over the dots or use the search tool in the top-left corner of the map to go to a specific location. (Zoom in to see the Fort Hood shooting, located close to another massacre in Texas, and to see other proximate shootings in Denver, Seattle, and elsewhere.)
Sources: Research by Mother Jones. (With thanks to the Associated Press, Canada.com, and Citizens Crime Commission of NYC.)
We used the following criteria to identify mass shootings:
- The shooter took the lives of at least four people. An FBI crime classification report identifies an individual as a mass murderer—versus a spree killer or a serial killer—if he kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself), typically in a single location.
- The killings were carried out by a lone shooter. (Except in the case of the Columbine massacre and the Westside Middle School killings, both of which involved two shooters.)
- The shootings occured in a public place. (Except in the case of a party in Crandon, Wisconsin, and another in Seattle.) Crimes primarily related to gang activity or armed robbery are not included.
- If the shooter died or was hurt from injuries sustained during the incident, he is included in the total victim count. (But we have excluded many cases in which there were three fatalities and the shooter also died, per the above FBI criterion.)
- We included six so-called "spree killings"—high-profile cases that fit closely with our above criteria for mass murder, but in which the killings occurred in more than one location over a short period of time.
Here are two charts detailing the killers' weapons:
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We've
updated and expanded this story with additional research multiple times
since initial publication on July 20, thanks in part to some valuable
feedback from MoJo readers. (Thanks also to Professor James Alan Fox of
Northeastern University.) For more about the mass shooting at the movie
theater in Aurora, Colo., click here, and for the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, click here. For additional reporting and analysis from our in-depth investigation, read this companion story. (Return to intro.)
First published: Fri Jul. 20, 2012 7:32 PM PDT.
Interactive production by Tasneem Raja and Jaeah Lee
Image: Clockwise from upper left: Wade Michael Page: Anti-Defamation League; James E. Holmes: Arapahoe County Sheriff's Dept./Zuma; Seung-Hui Cho: Virginia Tech University/Wikimedia; Jared Loughner: Pima County Sheriff's Office/Wikimedia
Interactive production by Tasneem Raja and Jaeah Lee
Image: Clockwise from upper left: Wade Michael Page: Anti-Defamation League; James E. Holmes: Arapahoe County Sheriff's Dept./Zuma; Seung-Hui Cho: Virginia Tech University/Wikimedia; Jared Loughner: Pima County Sheriff's Office/Wikimedia
