Mass shootings in the United States as tallied by the FBI declined last year even as the number of victims injured in such shootings rose, according to a report released Wednesday that is meant to track how often random gunfire erupts in crowded places.
There is no widely accepted definition of a mass shooting; some count based on a minimum number of dead victims, or a minimum number of overall victims. But another more expansive metric also measured a decline in incidents from 2021 to 2022. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit, which defines a mass shooting as when four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter, counted 646 such events last year and 690 the year before.
The FBI defines a mass shooting as when one or more individuals actively engage in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. The bureau’s definition excludes shootings motivated by gang violence, drug violence, domestic disputes or hostage situations, or resulting from another criminal act, like a bank robbery.
By the FBI’s yardstick, a mass shooting happened in the United States last year nearly once a week. Last year marked the first time in five years that the number of incidents declined. The overall trend has been toward more such shootings — both 2018 and 2019 saw 30 mass shootings apiece.
The shootings came most frequently in May, which featured nine such shootings, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., that killed 19 children and two adults, and a grocery store shooting in Buffalo, where 10 were killed. Sunday was also the deadliest day — mass shootings happened 12 times on Sundays and nine times on Mondays, while they were less common on Thursdays and Fridays, according to the FBI.
The highest-casualty mass shooting last year came on the Fourth of July, when a gunman opened fire on a parade in Highland Park, Ill., wounding 48 and killing seven.
The FBI report comes two weeks after a gunman opened fire inside a bank in Louisville, killing five people and injuring eight others before police killed him.
In about half of the 2022 incidents described in the report, the shooter had a prior connection to the place where they opened fire. Sometimes they were a current or former employee, sometimes a resident or former student or patient. The type of weapon used was also a roughly even split, with 29 handguns used and 26 rifles. Of the 50 shooters, 47 were male.