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Can Mass Shootings be Stopped?

Over the last two years, there have been a number of high-profile mass public shootings in the United States that have dominated the headlines and captured the attention of the public and policymakers alike—from Buffalo, New York (May 14, 2022; 10 dead) to Uvalde, Texas (May 24, 2022; 21 dead), Highland Park, Illinois (July 4, 2022; 7 dead), Monterrey Park, California (January 21, 2023; 11 dead), and Louisville, Kentucky (April 10, 2023; 5 dead). Although mass public shootings rarely made headlines during the height of the pandemic, the frequency of events has since rebounded to pre-COVID levels. Consequently, these and other mass public shootings have reinforced the need to do more to prevent these tragedies from occurring and to mitigate the harms to individuals and communities if and when they happen. To achieve these goals, it is important to understand the trends associated with the phenomenon of mass public shootings.

The Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (the Consortium) first published a report in 2018 analyzing 51 years (1966–2016) of mass public shootings data. In order to better understand the phenomenon of mass shootings, the report presented information on the location of shootings, weapons used, and demographics of the perpetrators. A follow-up report released in 2021 integrated an additional four years of data (2017–20). These reports were based on a comprehensive database of US mass public shootings from researchers Jaclyn Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass.

As the United States continues to face record rates of gun violence, with mass public shootings also increasing in frequency, the need for evidence-based policies is all the more important. A starting point, however, is understanding the different contexts and characteristics of various forms of firearm violence. Mass public shootings, although among the rarest forms of gun violence, require different strategies for prevention and response from other incidents. These shootings often involve considerable planning, which can provide important opportunities for identification, intervention, and de-escalation of the threat before it is carried out, unlike other forms of more spontaneous gun violence. Additionally, mass public shootings often are random in nature and occur in large, open public spaces, which present different challenges—including preventative security measures and law enforcement responses—from targeted incidents and those that occur in private locations.

Taken together, understanding the unique context of the mass public shootings phenomenon is necessary for policymakers, practitioners, and other vested stakeholders to work to reduce these incidents and their impacts. This updated report includes two additional years of data and identifies changes in trends related to mass shootings, particularly as Americans resumed activities like work and school outside of the home amid the rollout of the COVID vaccine. Specifically, this brief presents analyses of a total of 57 years of mass shootings data (1966–2022). The analyses include the frequency of events, fatalities and injuries, distribution of location types, patterns of weapon usage, and perpetrators’ demographic characteristics. The appendix reports the findings for only the two most recent years of data and compares them to the patterns for the previous 55 years.

K-12 School Shootings in Context: New Findings from The American School Shooting Study (TASSS)

Although statistically rare, fatal and nonfatal shootings in the United States at elementary, middle, and secondary schools remain important crime problems with significant public policy implications. Indeed, the impact of such violence exceeds the devastating fatalities and immense sorrow that survivors, families, and communities experience. Even one gunshot fired at a school can subject numerous individuals to the traumas of gun violence. Recent polls indicate that school shootings can also sway broader public views on crime, including attitudes toward violence reduction. As a result, school shootings have become a focal point of US politics, sparking crucial debates on the most effective strategies for preventing and responding to gun violence, both inside and outside K-12 schools.

While there has been a recent surge in school firearm violence studies, discrepancies persist in the research due to variations in definitions and datasets. Initially, our comprehension of school shootings originated from narrow studies focused on small samples of highly publicized mass killings where attackers indiscriminately fired upon multiple victims in their schools. By contrast, recent progress in quantitative studies and the establishment of extensive databases have provided alternative perspectives on the characteristics of school shootings more broadly. Within this domain, however, there are disparities in inclusion criteria, as some studies encompass school-related violence occurring both within and outside of school premises, leading to an inconsistent research base.

We created The American School Shooting Study (TASSS) in 2016 to address these incongruencies in the existing research. Previously, we reported findings from TASSS on the patterns and nature of US school-associated gun violence between 1990 and 2016, defined as the firing of a gun anywhere on K-12 school property, resulting in one or more gunshot injuries or fatalities, irrespective of the time of day or season. Our findings suggested critical nuances in school firearm violence regarding the situations they encompass, the characteristics of the perpetrator and victims, and the location of the incident on school grounds. For instance, this violence encompassed various scenarios, including interpersonal assaults, self-harm incidents where the shooter was the only victim, accidental gun discharges, and legally justified shootings. At the same time, mass casualty shootings (defined as four or more fatalities) were exceptionally infrequent, representing around 5 percent of all interpersonal assaults at schools. The other 95 percent of these shootings involved one or two victims, most of which were nonfatal incidents.

Even among the fatal and nonfatal interpersonal assaults involving known perpetrators, we found that gun violence at American schools displayed considerable variability. Although adults were responsible for almost 29 percent of such incidents, a significant majority (71 percent) involved young individuals aged between 6 and 19. Interestingly, many school shootings were carried out by individuals not enrolled in the schools, often occurring outside school buildings and outside school hours. These incidents were largely fueled by nonacademic concerns, such as personal disagreements or gang-related activities. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, multiple-victim attacks by troubled students account for just a minority of total cases. As such, it is beneficial for policymakers to differentiate between incidents of school shootings that take place within the school during school hours and those that occur outside the school buildings when the school is not in operation. Depending on the specific nature of each incident, tailored intervention strategies are essential. Just as responses to premeditated mass shootings differ from spontaneous assaults, there will be important qualitative differences here between cases that affect how officials prepare, prevent, and respond to school shootings.

In this brief, we present new insights from TASSS, diving deeper into the database’s potential to examine the locations, timing, and student involvement of youth-perpetrated gun violence. In the end, our goal is to equip stakeholders with the essential data they need to formulate effective policies that mitigate school violence.

RGVRC Annual Report 2023

The annual report from the Rockefeller Institute’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (RGVRC) highlights the important contributions the group made to understanding and addressing gun violence in 2023. Through cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative research, interviews with high-profile media outlets, and distillation of evidence into easy to understand policy recommendations, the group’s multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners are a critical component of the effort to reduce firearm-related injuries and deaths.

In 2023, Consortium experts published 16 separate research reports, briefs, and policy blogs through the Consortium. These publications covered a range of firearm-related violence issues, such as firearm regulations, stand-your-ground laws, Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs, or “red flag” laws), school and mass shootings, and Second Amendment questions before the US Supreme Court, among others.

Other key highlights in the annual report:

  • Consortium experts published more than 200 books, chapters, and articles in peer-reviewed journals.
  • Members of the Consortium appeared in the media more than 125 times in 2023.
  • With the creation of an affiliate scholar program, the Consortium now connects 115 scholars and practitioners across the United States and internationally.
  • The RGVRC, through the participation of its executive director, was part of nearly $1.1 million in grant funding awarded during 2023.

Police Shootings of Residents Across the United States, 2015–20: A Comparison of States

Broader public, media, and scholarly interest in police shootings of residents in the United States has been a constant since 2014. This interest followed a number of high-profile deadly force incidents, including those leading to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH. In the decade since, researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have learned much about the scope and nature of police shootings. While US police as a whole use their firearms more than most other countries, rates of police shootings of residents vary across states.

The purpose of this report is to examine police shootings of residents—including both fatal and nonfatal, injurious incidents—using a comparative lens. More specifically, it explores rates of police shootings in the states comprising the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (RGVRC)—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—with the rest of the country. These comparisons suggest an association between levels of firearm prevalence/availability in the general population, as well as related laws and rates of police shootings per capita. The majority of RGVRC states possess the lowest rates of police shootings of residents, which appears to at least partially be a function of low levels of firearm prevalence/availability among residents and strong laws and legislation related to guns.

The roots of charity: How Gendered Racialization Shapes Crowdfunding for Women and Girls Murdered by Gun Violence

The financial fallout of American gun violence profoundly impacts both victims and survivors. While employers, insurance companies, and victim compensation programs provide some support for navigating this fallout, many look to private channels—such as crowdfunding—to supplement these often-inadequate resources. We ask: How do those seeking material support on behalf of murdered women and girls assert worthiness and frame claims for restitution in the aftermath of gun violence? On whose behalf is material support requested, and what kinds of support are solicited? Using scholarship on digital sharing economies and the literature on gendered racialization to understand how broader systems of social inequality shape who seeks support and how, we examine GoFundMe crowdfunding campaigns in California and Florida from 2016 through 2018. We find that gendered-racialized strategies of solicitation in campaigns shape how victims are presented as deserving of support. This reinforces a distorted vision of gun violence, with campaigns emphasizing white women and girls as victims through calls for public grief, whereas campaigns for Black and Latinx women and girls frame loss as private trouble.

Campaign of fear and consumption: problematizing gender-based marketing of weapons

This paper problematizes the fear-based marketing of guns and tasers to both men and women as a function of neoliberalism’s emphasis on consumption as the solution to social problems. Men are marketed dangerous weapons as a way to display their masculinity, while women are told that purchasing guns or tasers is one of the best ways to protect themselves from domestic violence and sexual assault. As the paper shows, that claim is in stark contrast to data about these phenomena, and yet such marketing is often taken as a common sense solution. In addition to detailing why such marketing of weapons is problematic, we offer several recommendations.

Choose to Change: Your Mind, Your Game

Research Brief

Gun violence disproportionately affects youth and young adults living in our city and our country’s most historically under-resourced neighborhoods. The fundamental disparities in basic safety that exist mean that young people growing up in some Chicago neighborhoods are exposed to gun violence at rates almost 30 times higher than their peers just a few miles — or even a few blocks — away. For the children and families living in the communities most affected, consistent exposure to violence and trauma can be detrimental to their mental health, emotional development, and academic engagement.1 While undoing the decades of systemic disinvestment that have created inequity in opportunity will take time, in the immediate term we need to find ways to better support the young people bearing the greatest burdens of violence. Recent research from Chicago and elsewhere suggests providing behavioral and mental health supports can help decrease violence involvement and increase academic engagement.2 These programs, based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles, seek to give young people additional tools to navigate their difficult environments — return a sense of safety, slow down their decision-making processes, and increase their social-emotional skillset. Despite the promise of these approaches, there is a dearth of programming for youth who are no longer consistently attending school and those who are already interacting with the justice system.

Thinking, Fast And Slow? Some Field Experiments To Reduce Crime And Dropout In Chicago

We present the results of three large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) carried out in Chicago, testing interventions to reduce crime and dropout by changing the decision making of economically disadvantaged youth. We study a program called Becoming a Man (BAM), developed by the nonprofit Youth Guidance, in two RCTs implemented in 2009–2010 and 2013–2015. In the two studies