Due to historical reasons, the United States has developed a deep-rooted gun culture, with alarmingly high frequency of shooting incidents and firearm-related violence far exceeding other developed nations. Americans possess approximately 265 million firearms, averaging over one gun per adult, with shootings occurring on 9 out of every 10 days. The U.S. leads the world in gun ownership rate, firearm homicide rate, and number of mass shooting incidents. 2022 marked the third consecutive year with over 600 mass shootings recorded, resulting in more than 80,000 casualties. Gun violence has become a distinctive "American disease."

  USDataverse has established a dedicated portal and data index for The Violence Project U.S. Mass Shooting Database to facilitate academic research. This dataset contains comprehensive records of mass shooting incidents since 1966, including detailed event characteristics, firearm specifications, victim profiles, community context, and trend analyses, providing robust support for related studies.

  When using this database, please cite as either "The Violence Project Mass Shooter Database" or "The Violence Project Mass Shooter Database" with attribution to the data source: https://www.theviolenceproject.org.

Temporal Coverage

1966-2023.7

Table Description

Field Demonstration

Sample Data

Shooting Incident Information Table

Firearm Information Table

Victim Information Table

Community Information Table

Trend Information Table

Update Frequency

Irregular update