Mass Shootings Plummeted in 2025

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Mass killings in the United States dropped to their lowest level in two decades in 2025, even as Congress failed to enact any new federal gun control laws.

Seventeen incidents met the threshold for mass killing this year, down from 42 in 2023 and the fewest since national tracking began in 2006, according to recent data from the Mass Killing Database, a project led by Northeastern University in collaboration with USA Today
and the Associated Press.

“This is not a victory lap for gun reform—it’s a return to a more typical level,” said James Alan Fox, a research professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern who oversees the database, in an interview with Newsweek

Researchers say the drop is less about federal legislation — or the lack thereof — and more about a statistical "settling" after pandemic-era volatility. The decline, they argue, reflects a regression to the mean following several years of elevated violence, paired with localized policy shifts and evolving patterns in how mass killings occur.

“We had a spike after the pandemic, and we’re now back at pre-COVID levels,” Fox said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re safe. These events are still tragic, and they can still happen.”

Fox, who has studied mass violence for more than 40 years, emphasized that most of these incidents don’t resemble the high-profile public shootings that dominate headlines. Nearly half occur within families or involve domestic disputes. Of the 17 cases recorded in 2025, only four happened in public spaces.

“Those are the ones that scare people—schools, restaurants, churches,” Fox said. “They dominate the headlines because they feel random and close to home. But they’re the exception. Family-related massacres are far more common.”

Multiple Factors
Mass killings are rare but unpredictable. James Densley, a criminologist at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, noted that even small changes in such low-frequency events can appear dramatic. “2025 looks really good in historical context,” Densley told the AP. “But we can’t pretend the problem is gone.”

Fox agrees. “Big drops are often followed by upticks,” he said. “If we go into 2026 and the number rises, that wouldn’t surprise me. But if it’s a modest increase, that would still count as progress.”

Several factors may have contributed to this year’s decline, including a broader drop in violent crime, improved trauma response and increased investment in behavioral threat assessments. One such example occurred in Minneapolis, where more than 20 people were injured in an August school shooting—but only two died. Densley credited first responders and the nearby pediatric trauma infrastructure for saving lives. That shooting was not included in the database, given its death toll.

School-based threat assessments have also expanded in recent years, with at least 22 states now requiring them. The approach focuses on early intervention and behavioral evaluation, and advocates say it may be helping prevent some school-based violence. Notably, no school-related mass killings were recorded in 2025.

The longer-term effects of the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act may also be a factor. The law gave states flexibility to fund mental health services, violence prevention programs, and local interventions. “It’s not just a gun problem or a people problem,” said Christopher Carita, a former police officer and training specialist with the safety group 97Percent. “For the first time, we’re treating it as both.”

Fox is cautious about linking this year’s drop to any one initiative. “There’s been no major federal legislation in the last year that would explain this decline,” he said. “But some state-level measures are clearly helping. States that require permits to purchase—where background checks are more thorough—see fewer public mass shootings. And states that ban high-capacity magazines tend to have lower death tolls when shootings happen.”

A Drop—But Still Too High
Broader gun violence data from the independent Gun Violence Archive shows that 2025 saw a meaningful drop in multiple categories of gun violence. The number of mass shootings—defined by the Archive more broadly than the Mass Killing Database as incidents in which four or more people were shot—fell to 388 as of December 11. That’s a steep decline from 659 in 2023 and 689 in 2021, and marks one of the sharpest year-over-year decreases in the past decade.
Gun deaths and injuries followed the same trend. The GVA recorded 13,821 fatalities and 24,968 injuries from gun-related incidents in 2025, including homicides, unintentional discharges, defensive uses, and officer-involved shootings. It’s the lowest death toll since 2015 and a 30 percent drop from the 2021 peak.

Still, the totals remain staggering. The current fatality count is thousands above the average seen in the mid-2010s. And the toll on children is particularly sobering: in 2025, 216 children under the age of 11 were killed by gunfire, and another 447 were injured. Among teens aged 12 to 17, 962 were killed and 2,624 wounded—figures that far exceed those of any other developed nation.

Gun control advocates often point to Australia, where in 1996 the country enacted a sweeping gun reform law that eventually curtailed private firearm ownership. They cite that success—along with the high American death toll—as evidence that far more aggressive reform is needed. Fox doesn’t dispute that U.S. numbers are too high, but he views the issue through a pragmatic lens.
“That’s not going to happen here,” he said. “We have the Second Amendment. That’s not changing. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do better.”