Most commonly, the killer seeks to get even with people they know for real or perceived slights. The motive for a mass killing is often revenge. Perpetrators are often dealing with relationship and financial struggles for an extended time, and a particularly traumatic event can push them to kill. Perpetrators usually plan their assaults for days, weeks or months.Īccording to a study by Melanie Taylor in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, a failed or estranged relationship is the most common reasons for committing a mass killing. Mass killers typically target certain people for a number of specific reasons, including a specific event like the end of relationship or loss of a job. Mass killings are rarely indiscriminate. At the same time, most family homicides involve middle-aged men. Offenders who commit public mass killings tend to be younger. According to Stone, men tend to be more aggressive and are more prone to violence. “It’s somebody who has fewer capacities at his disposal for adjusting to the crisis of losing the job or the girlfriend and will feel that life is over.”įour in 10 men report that they own a gun. “The ones who are more apt to commit mass murder are the ones who are paranoid, and who are suspicious and mistrusting and think that everyone is against them,” said Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University who maintains a database of 350 mass killers going back more than a century. Offenders are often socially isolated and have limited social support. Women were 35 times more likely to commit suicide if they own a handgun.Īccording to one study by James Knoll and Ronald Pies in the medical trade publication Psychiatric Times, mass killers are typically angry, aggrieved, emotionally unstable people who seek retribution or revenge for perceived mistreatment, rejection or humiliation. Men who own handguns are almost eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t, according to a California study published in 2021 by the New England Journal of Medicine that examined more than 25 million gun owners. Since 2006, firearm suicide rates have been steadily increasing. Nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths in the U.S. In this database, the long guns category includes any gun larger than a handgun, including rifles and shotguns.įar more people kill themselves with a firearm each year than are killed with one, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by Everytown for Gun Safety.
According to Fox, handguns are easily concealable and some can be equipped with large-capacity magazines. Semiautomatic handguns are far more common in mass killings than guns that are typically classified as assault weapons. What Russian ammo ban?: Loophole keeps it on US shelves, splitting gun rights groups Is it going to the right communities?Īre gun ads in FTC’s crosshairs?: Critics decry ‘toxic’ messaging as firearm sales soar Gun violence prevention: The US is investing millions to stop gun deaths. The number of victims is somewhat higher than average but still below previous highs.
The number of mass killings in 2022 is about average compared with previous years despite recent shootings that captured public attention. However, our data is broader in other ways. It includes every mass killing since 2006 from all weapons in which four or more people, excluding the offender, were killed within a 24-hour time frame. Over the past decade, USA TODAY, along with Northeastern University and The Associated Press, has been tracking all mass killings in the United States. When it comes to gun violence, our database is narrower than other tracking sites, such as the Gun Violence Archive, that include shootings that injure large numbers of people but kill no one.