List of worst mass shootings in U.S. history a long one
Fourteen months after a deadly shooting spree in Florida set a record for gun violence in the U.S., another brutal rampage has become the grim benchmark.
At least 59 people were killed and 527 were injured when a gunman opened fire Sunday night on people attending a country music festival in Las Vegas. It is being called the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Other U.S. shooting sprees: June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, kills 49 people and wounds
58 others at a gay nightclub in Orlando that was hosting a Latin night. He was killed by police.
April 16, 2007: Seung Hui Cho, a 23-year-old student, went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., killing 32 people, before killing himself.
Dec. 14, 2012: Adam Lanza,
20, gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before killing himself.
Oct 16, 1991: George Hen- nard, 35, crashed his pickup into Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. He shot and killed 23 people before committing suicide.
July 18, 1984: James Huberty, 41, gunned down 21 adults and children at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, Calif., before being killed by police.
Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Joseph Whitman, a former U.S. Marine, shot and killed 16 people from a university tower at the University of Texas in Austin before being shot by police.
Aug. 20, 1986: A part-time mail carrier, Patrick Henry Sherrill, shot and killed 14 postal workers in Edmund, Okla., before killing himself.
Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in Redlands, Calif., opened fire at a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, killing 14 people and injuring 22. Farook, an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, worked at the health department. Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post before the shooting.
Nov. 5, 2009: U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan fatally shot 13 people and injured 30 others at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas. Hasan, a psychiatrist, appeared to have been radicalized by an Islamic cleric. He was convicted and sentenced to death.
Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, 34, fatally shot 12 people and injured three others at the head-
quarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C. He was killed by police.
July 20, 2012: James Holmes gunned down 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Last year, he was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years without parole.
Oct. 1, 2015: Christopher Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old student at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., shot an assistant professor and eight students in a classroom. After a shootout with police, he committed suicide. uJune 18, 2015: A gunman opened fire at a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Nine people were killed, including pastor Clementa Pinckney. The morning after the attack, police arrested a suspect, Dylann Roof, 21, who said he wanted to start a race war. In December, Roof was convicted of 33 federal hate crimes charges; in January he was sentenced to death.
WHAT IS A MASS SHOOTING?
The FBI defines mass killings as four or more being killed, not including suspects, in an event. The killing may stretch over a day or more and some distance, especially if it includes killings committed in flight or against targeted people. It does not include an extended “cooling-off period” to distinguish this kind of crime from acts of serial killers.