2024 Will Likely Have the Fewest Deaths From Mass Shootings in 20 Years

Today for the Washington Monthly I wrote about one of the most unsettling acts of gun violence this year: the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the misguided manifesto of the man charged, Luigi Mangione.

But despite this cold-blooded murder in the broad daylight of New York City, with less than three weeks left in 2024, this year is shaping up to have the fewest deaths from public mass shootings since 2004.

I’ll review the surprising numbers. But first, here’s what’s leading the Washington Monthly website:

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Luigi Mangione’s Manifesto Is Stupid: My critique of the thin rationale made by the alleged killer. Click here for the full story.

North Carolina’s Democrat in a Trump District: Former Associate Editor Marc Novicoff interviews Representative Don Davis about what Democrats can learn from his re-election. Click here for the full story.

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According to the public mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones, America has only suffered two such events this year, resulting in eight deaths.

In only two other years during the last two decades did we experience just two public mass shootings: 2020 (which was largely spent in pandemic lockdown) and 2005, killing 9 and 17 people respectively. The last year with only one mass shooting was 2004, when a man killed four at a heavy metal concert.

The Mother Jones database does not include every incident of gun violence. It only includes “indiscriminate rampages” in public places with at least four deaths. That excludes armed robberies and gang violence, as well as domestic violence incidents in private settings.

Public mass shootings are far from the leading cause of gun deaths. As I explained in the Monthly back in 2022, “Annual gun deaths between 2016 and 2020 averaged 40,620, according to statistics tabulated by the gun safety advocates at Everytown for Gun Safety. Of those, 23,891, or 59 percent, were suicides. Based on numbers from Mother Jones, the average annual number of deaths from public mass shootings in the same period was 70.”

But public mass shootings are surely the leading cause of fear and anxiety about gun violence, particularly in schools and on college campuses. As with any sort of terrorism, the random nature of public mass shootings require a policy response to help assure people they can safely participate in public spaces.

The low rate of public mass shootings in 2005 was not surprising. The five prior years featured no more than one such violent act per year (after a spate of mass shootings in the latter half of the 1990s, mostly at workplaces but including the infamous Columbine school massacre.)

But this year’s low rate marks a huge drop. We had 12 public mass shootings in 2023 causing 75 deaths, and another 12 in 2022 with 74 deaths. Between 2015 and 2023, not counting the pandemic year of 2020, the lowest number of annual public mass shooting deaths was 43 in 2021 (as America emerged from pandemic lockdowns), and the highest was 119 in 2017 (the year of the Las Vegas Strip massacre that killed 60).

Do the eight public mass shooting deaths in 2024 amount to a fluke year? Or are we doing something right?

I can’t give you a definitive answer. But I suspect that the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act–one of several bipartisan success stories during the Joe Biden presidency–has something to do with it.

As I wrote at the time, “the centerpiece of the plan calls for ‘major investments to increase access to mental health and suicide prevention programs,’ combined with state incentives to adopt ‘crisis intervention’ programs (also known as ‘red flag’ laws) that would confiscate weapons from, and ban purchases by, those determined to be a danger to themselves or others.”

And a 2022 study of red flag orders in six states found that ten percent of them “were in response to a threat of killing at least 3 people”–a disproportionately high percentage–and the “most common target for a multiple victim/mass shooting threat was a K-12 school.”

Red flag laws don’t help with the relatively small problem of mass shootings at the expense of the larger problem of suicides. Research published in August found that for every 17 to 23 red flag orders, one suicide is prevented.

When the bill passed 19 states already had red flag laws. In April 2023 I lamented that no new states had adopted such a law, though since then Minnesota and Michigan have.

Even if redder states are still resisting red flag laws, implementation where they are in place may be improving. A striking example is New York. Last January, the Washington Post reported on how New York is requiring police to pursue red flags when there is a credible threat:

…the results of the experiment have been dramatic. Last year, the state’s civil court judges approved more than 4,300 final orders under the law, up from 222 in 2021. At least 1,800 guns were removed by the state police and local law enforcement agencies in 2023.

…Last year, the law was used to respond to an array of possible dangers, from suicide to mass violence: a student who brought a gun to school and allegedly talked about shooting a teacher; a teenager who police said brandished a gun on a school bus; a man who threatened to shoot up a supermarket with his father’s gun; a woman experiencing delusions who brought a shotgun to a gas station.

Beyond the New York example, the increased attention on red flag laws–including tragic examples where red flags clearly could have prevented shootings, such as the 2023 Lewiston, Maine bowling alley attack–may be prompting greater use.

We can’t draw firm conclusions from just one year’s worth of data. But hopefully, more and more states will see the promise of red flag laws, and the number of public mass shootings will continue to decline.

Best,

Bill

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