Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017
Federal Bureau of Investigation
April 2018

Most shooters did not have a diagnosed mental illness, obtain their guns legally, and target their victims specifically.

There were 30 active shootings last year and 20 in 2016. The only year that came close to topping 2017 for active gunmen was 2010, which had 26 incidents. 

There were 138 people killed and 593 wounded in 2017 during active shootings, topping all years since 2000. The number of killed has fluctuated greatly each year.

All 50 shooters in 2016 and 2017 were men, all of whom worked alone. In the FBI’s previous report, which examined 2014 and 2015, there were 42 shooters, three of whom were women. 

The attacks in 2016 and 2017 were stopped in a variety of ways. Thirteen of the gunmen committed suicide, 11 were killed by police, eight were stopped by citizens and 18 were taken into custody by officers. 

Throughout the attacks in 2016 and 2017, 21 states reported an active shooter situation. Six happened in Texas. Five happened in both California and Florida. 

Shooters don’t discriminate on the locations of their attacks: One happened in a mall, seven in schools, three in government buildings, two in churches and more than a dozen happened in a variety of open spaces, businesses, workplaces, several incidents even happened while a gunman was driving a car.

 

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Firearm Violence in Tennessee: 2013-2016
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
December 2017

The TBI issued a first of its kind report detailing the nature and volume of reported firearm-related crimes over a four year period.

From 2013 to 2016, firearm-related criminal offenses increased by 24.8%.  The TBI points out that the increase in gun violence is not related to the 2.4% increases in population.

The number of reported murders involving a firearm increased by 54.7% in the four-year study period.

Aggravated Assaults accounted for the largest portion of reported firearms-related crime, and increased by 30.5% from 2013 to 2016.

Males (85.8%) were nine times more likely to engage in firearm-related criminal offenses than females (8.8%).

 

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Programs that Promote Safe Storage and Research on Their Effectiveness
Government Accountability Office
September 2017

On October 18th, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report focused on gun safety programs for children.  The report was a review of four peer-reviewed research papers published between 1996 and 2009 in academic journals.

The report concluded that children who received gun safety instruction, such as leaving the room or not touching a gun, were no more likely to follow the rules than those who had not received the instruction.

The GAO analysis showed that each of the four studies came to the same conclusion: informational sessions or videos such as the National Rifle Association’s “Eddie Eagle” program “did not instill consistent safe firearm habits in young children.”

The report also points out that funding for gun violence prevention research is disproportionately low relative to health issues with comparative mortality rates.  According to the report, government-funded research for gun violence is .7 percent of that for sepsis, which has a comparable mortality rate, and the publication volume for studies on firearm-related deaths is about four percent of that for sepsis.