‘Age of mass shootings’
Criminologist laments ‘angry, frustrated time’
A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA TODAY and Northeastern University shows there were more mass killings in 2019 than any other year dating to at least the 1970s.
The first one occurred 19 days into the new year when a man used an ax to kill four family members, including his infant daughter. Five months later, 12 people were killed in a workplace shooting in Virginia. Twenty-two more died at a Walmart in El Paso in August.
A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA TODAY and Northeastern University shows that there were more mass killings in 2019 than any year since at least the 1970s, punctuated by a chilling succession of deadly rampages during the summer.
There were 41 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed, excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings. More than 210 people were killed.
Among other trends in 2019:
❚ The 41 mass killings were the most in a single year since the database began tracking such events in 2006, but other research dating to the 1970s shows no other year with as many mass slayings. The second-most killings in a year before 2019 was 38 in 2006.
❚ The 211 people killed in this year’s cases is still eclipsed by the 224 victims in 2017, when the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place in Las Vegas.
❚ California, with some of the most strict gun laws in the country, had the most, with eight mass slayings. But nearly half of U.S. states experienced a mass slaying, from the nation’s largest city, New York, to tiny towns like Elkmont, Alabama.
❚ A firearm was used in all but eight of the mass killings. Other weapons included knives and axes; at least twice, the perpetrator set a mobile home on fire.
❚ Nine mass shootings occurred in a public place. Other mass killings occurred in homes, in the workplace or at a bar.
James Densley, a criminologist and professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, said the database confirms and mirrors his research.
“What makes this even more exceptional is that mass killings are going up at a time when general homicides, overall homicides, are going down,” Densley said. “As a percentage of homicides, these mass killings are also accounting for more deaths. ”
Densley believes the trend to be part of an “angry and frustrated time.” Densley also said crime tends to go in waves, with the 1970s and 1980s seeing a number of serial killers, the 1990s marked by school shootings and child abductions and the early 2000s dominated by concerns over terrorism.
“This seems to be the age of mass shootings,” Densley said.
He and James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, also expressed worries about the “contagion effect,” the focus on mass killings fueling other mass killings.
“These are still rare events. Clearly the risk is low but the fear is high,” Fox said. “What fuels contagion is fear.”