Definitions of the term “mass shooting” have never been set in stone, sometimes creating confusion about how statistics on gun violence should be categorized and interpreted.
The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit that tracks shooting incidents in the United States, uses a strict standard, considering an incident a mass shootings when four or more people are shot and killed, not including the shooter.
Using that threshold, the U.S. had a widely reported 251 mass shootings in the first 216 days of 2019 — highlighted by deadly attacks in Virginia Beach and El Paso, Texas.
The Gun Violence Archive’s numerical definition of “mass shooting” doesn’t necessarily account for the circumstantial data it otherwise collects and uses to annotate shooting incidents.
The FBI, by contrast, previously defined “mass murder” in the 1980s as any incident during which four or more homicides occur within the same event or in close geographic proximity. Federal officials have since shifted their terminology to “active shooter incident” in order to describe fluid scenarios involving gun violence.
