FBI Data Says Active Shooter Incidents are Rising

December 17, 2018

The number of active-shooter scenarios are rocketing skyward, according to an FBI report, jumping from 40 during 2014-15 to 50 during 2016-17.

The number increased from 20 in 2016 to 30 in 2017, with nearly 1,000 casualties in 21 states — a total of 221 killed and 722 wounded, for a total of 943, not including the shooters.

“This report does not encompass all gun-related situations,” said the report. “Rather, it focuses on a specific type of shooting situation. The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of one or more firearms.”

The FBI report identified the 50 shooters in 2016-17 as “all male,” ranging in age from 14 to 66 years old. The previous two years showed 42 shooters, 39 men and three women.

Six of the shootings occurred in Texas, the FBI said, with five each in California and Florida, four in Ohio, and three in Maryland and Washington State.

Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin each saw two such incidents, and Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina all had one each.

The 2017 numbers were spiked, the report said, by the murder of 58 country music fans at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas; the shooting of 49 attendees at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and the shooting of 26 worshipers at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX.

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