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.
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.
Weapons: Of the 142 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally. The arsenal included dozens of assault weapons and semiautomatic handguns. (See charts below.) Just as Jeffrey Weise used a .40-caliber Glock to slaughter students in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, so too did James Holmes, along with an AR-15 assault rifle, when blasting away at his victims in a darkened movie theater. In Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza wielded a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle as he massacred 20 school children and six adults.
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.
For more on how we determined the criteria, see our mass shootings explainer. Plus: more on the crucial mental illness factor, and on the recent barrage of state laws rolling back gun restrictions across the US. And: Explore the full data set behind our investigation.
Here are two charts detailing the killers' weapons:
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
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