A Few Bad Apples

The myth of the mass shooting epidemic

The risk of being gunned down in public or in school is overstated.
As a result, we’re getting bad policies that make us less safe.
By James Alan Fox Updated January 3, 2025, 3:00 a.m.

Fourth-grade students huddled in a closet during a monthly lockdown drill at the St. Bernard School in New Washington, Ohio, on Jan. 14, 2013.CRAIG RUTTLE

It may come as a surprise that mass shootings, particularly those in which multiple people were killed, declined in 2024. According to a database managed by Northeastern University in partnership with the Associated Press and USA Today, there were 30 shootings that left four or more people dead last year, down from 39 in 2023.

Even more noteworthy, there were just three such shootings in public settings: a market in Fordyce, Ark.; a commuter rail train outside Chicago; and a high school in Winder, Ga. There were 10 such incidents in 2023.

Deadly public and school shootings are undeniably horrific. Nevertheless, it is important to keep the risk in proper perspective. The indiscriminate public slaughters that scare people the most - the ones that can happen to any of us at any time, in any place, without warning - are far rarer than we are generally led to believe.

And the high level of fear of deadly mass shootings is leading to bad policies, from relaxed concealed-carry laws to traumatic lockdown drills in schools.

Of course, last year’s drop in mass shootings does not make a trend. The decline came after a year that had the most such shootings on record. It may just be a case of criminological gravity - what goes up eventually comes down - and not the start of safer days ahead.

Even so, deadly mass shootings have not skyrocketed over the past couple of decades, as many people believe, especially considering the growth in population. It is not an "epidemic" - a characterization frequently heard in the aftermath of massacres such as the October 2023 shooting deaths of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine.

But what could be described as an epidemic are the worry and anxiety, which greatly exceed the risk. The percentage of Americans indicating that they are fearful about mass shootings nearly tripled from 16 percent in 2015 to 46 percent in 2024, according to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears. And as many as one-third of respondents in a 2019 survey commissioned by the American Psychological Association admitted to having avoided certain places or events out of concern for falling victim in a shooting rampage.

In fact, domestic and gang- or drug-related shootings account for the majority of mass shooting incidents.
A Flourish chart WebSite

So why the sense that these deadly shootings are rampant when the total number of deaths is in the hundreds among a population of more than 330 million? In part, it results from the extensive media coverage of shootings at schools and in other public places.

News coverage of any given massacre is understandable, but it tends to be accompanied by confusing statistics. As it happens, there are several definitions of what constitutes a mass shooting, and depending on which definition one chooses, there may be, on average, as few as six or as many as 600 mass shootings a year.

Some media outlets prefer the broadest definition with large incident counts, referencing the Gun Violence Archive’s tallies of shootings with four or more killed or injured (which also declined by more than 20 percent in 2024 from 2023). There are hundreds of such cases every year, but half do not involve any deaths and another quarter result in a single victim fatality.

I do not mean to overlook the pain and suffering of those who survive bullet wounds. But shootings that cause injuries are being conflated with those resulting in multiple fatalities.

For example, at the end of 2021 The New York Times published what it called "a partial list of mass shootings" that year. The story presented descriptions for "an incomplete list" of two dozen massacres, each with at least four victims killed, noting that the list left out "many more." However, the "many more" not listed were several hundred shootings of lesser severity. In effect, the "partial list" characterization misleadingly implied that the omitted incidents were like the deadliest featured in the piece.

Another misimpression arises with school shootings. In August 2023, according to Gallup, nearly four out of 10 parents indicated that they feared for their children’s safety at school.

It’s understandable why parents are so concerned, given some of the statistics reported on school shootings. "In 2024 there were at least 205 incidents of gunfire on school grounds," according to the advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety, "resulting in 58 deaths and 156 injuries nationally."

Of this total, 146 involved K-12 schools, a startling figure. And apparently half of these (76) involved an attack by an armed assailant, as opposed to suicide attempts, accidental discharges of firearms, and instances involving no injuries whatsoever. Two dozen of the attacks left at least one victim dead.

However, the majority of these fatal assaults happened at school, such as in the parking lot or on school grounds, rather than in school. Indeed, in 2024, only five fatal attacks took place within the walls of a K-12 school building - the kind of incidents that have motivated school districts to stage active shooter drills, allow staff members to be armed at school, and equip classrooms with door locks and safe rooms.

These in-school shootings resulted in 11 fatalities in 2024, five of them students. Although one student fatality is one too many, this was out of 50 million enrolled, translating to a 1-in-10 million risk.
In other words, some of the billions spent by school districts on "target hardening" might be better invested in school psychologists to deal with the underlying causes of student angst and alienation rather than the most extreme outcomes. Moreover, physical security measures, as well as frequent and aggressive lockdown drills, should be toned down to avoid inadvertently sending the message to students that they are likely to be in grave danger while in school.

It is a shame that so many Americans feel the need to avoid public places when the risk of being gunned down in them is exceptionally small. It is also sad that a majority of students feel uneasy at school when they are rather safe there, given the supervision and structure at school that many youth lack in the after-school hours or even at home. It’s also unfortunate that some states have reacted to school shootings by allowing weapons on college campuses, where depression, alcohol, and guns are a dangerous mix.

Meanwhile, about 20 percent of mass killings are committed with knives, blunt objects, fire, or motor vehicles, as in the New Year’s Day attack in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Victims of these attacks matter just as much as those dying from gunshot wounds. Thus, in addition to implementing sensible gun laws, we should emphasize prevention strategies that help individuals struggling emotionally or socially, to address the underlying causes of extreme violence, regardless of the weapon used.

The right solutions

Though mass shootings do not constitute an epidemic, they still deserve our efforts to curtail the already low risk.

When I said in 2019 that there is no evidence of a mass shooting epidemic, President Trump retweeted my claim, presumably to deny the urgency for additional gun restrictions. However, research by my colleagues and me has found that states with permit-to-purchase laws - including Massachusetts - have significantly fewer public mass shootings. And states with bans on large-capacity magazines - also including Massachusetts - have significantly lower numbers of casualties when there is a public shooting.

A lesson from the not-too-distant past reminds us that we are actually safer when we spend less time and mental energy worrying about such tragedies.

From February 1996 through March 2001, the nation was shocked by eight mass shootings in schools, each with at least four victims and two or more fatalities, including the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. A contagion of bloodshed developed: Dispirited adolescents took their cue from other young assailants before them. The scourge of gun violence was of such concern that the Clinton administration convened an advisory committee on school shootings, of which I was a member.

But after March 2001, mass shootings in schools stopped. There were none for another four years. Apparently, there was a shift in what weighed on the minds of Americans. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the nation became hyper focused on threats from abroad, and the contagion of school shootings faded. For a while, angry or miserable students were not thinking that shooting up their school was a thing to do.

Again, none of this is to diminish the terror of massacres and school shootings. But it is to say that they should not be viewed as our "new normal."

James Alan Fox is a professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University and coauthor of "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder." He oversees the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.

Actual Article Link: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/03/opinion/mass-shootings-gun-violence-epidemic/?s_campaign=8315:varf