Five states spared from mass shootings

Five US states were immune to the bloody, perpetual series of mass shootings in the United States this year, which has seen more of them than the number of days gone by.

Experts debate whether the states were spared thanks to coincidence or if circumstances there make them a haven of peace.

As of December 2, 353 mass shootings have killed 462 people in 220 cities, according to the shootingtracker.com website.

A total of 1,317 people were wounded, after adjusting for the latest toll from the last mass shooting, which saw a husband and wife couple kill 14 and wound 22 in San Bernardino, California, the deadliest such tragedy in three years. If there is no slowdown to this frenetic pace, there will be as many such traumatic deadly events as there are days in the year. Or more.

The count includes all events that have killed or wounded at least four people. Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming alone were spared such a macabre fate.

All of them except West Virginia have not seen a single mass shooting since 2013, when the website first began its count based not on official figures but on reports obtained from media reports and other sources.

The outcome owes in part to the relatively low population density in those states, experts say.