Liberty Evidence Engine

Evidence · 2026-08-31

How much of U.S. homicide is FBI “active shooter”?

FBI active-shooter reports name a real, narrow category. Put those killed counts next to the same national murder estimate LEE already uses for urban concentration, and the share is a fraction of one percent. Most U.S. homicide sits outside that file. Download the series. This page reports that scale.

Download series CSV Adjust the years Methods

Interactive explorer · FBI active shooter vs homicide

Adjust the years. The 2023 share stays a scale fact.

Loading FBI series…

Window

—

Incidents in window

—

Killed in window

—

2023 share of murder estimate

—

FBI active shooter is the FBI category. Gun Violence Archive “4+ shot” and media “mass shooting” are different counts. 2023 denominator is the same FBI murder estimate already locked on the urban homicide page (18253). Recomputed in your browser from the downloadable CSV. The page reports that scale.

Year series

Static reference table. Use the explorer above to try other settings.

year incidents killed wounded mass_killings fbi_murder_estimate share_of_murder_pct
2018 30 86 139
2019 30 103 155 13
2020 40 38 126 5
2021 61 103 140 12
2022 50 100 213 13
2023 48 105 139 15 18253 0.575

Methods & limits

Question. When policy talk treats “mass shooters” and their gun purchases as the face of American homicide, how large is the FBI’s own active-shooter killed count relative to estimated U.S. murder?

  • This is a scale exhibit. The numerator is the FBI active-shooter killed count beside the national murder estimate. California dealer-record microdata and a purchase-timing classifier are a different project.
  • Numerator is people killed in FBI-designated active shooter incidents. The FBI’s working definition is one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. The 2023 report names the category. Gang-and-drug related shootings and many residential or domestic disputes sit outside this file.
  • FBI “mass killing” on this page is the federal three-or-more-killed-in-a-single-incident definition used in those reports. Gun Violence Archive “four or more shot,” media “mass shooting” lists, and every homicide with a firearm are different counts. Definition chips are prose. The ingested file is the FBI series.
  • 2019–2023 incidents, killed, wounded, casualties, and mass-killing counts are taken from the FBI/ALERRT PDF Active Shooter Incidents in the United States, 2023 (June 2024). The 2019–2023 killed table in that PDF is: 2019 103; 2020 38; 2021 103; 2022 100; 2023 105. Incidents: 30, 40, 61, 50, 48. The same PDF states 48 incidents and 244 casualties (105 killed, 139 wounded) for 2023.
  • 2018 incidents (30) and killed/wounded (86 / 139) come from the FBI/ALERRT PDF Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2022 (April 2023). The 2023 PDF says prior published incident data was not updated in that later report, so 2018 is labeled from the 2022 PDF only.
  • 2023 denominator is 18,253 estimated U.S. murder and nonnegligent manslaughter — the same FBI Crime in the Nation 2023 figure already locked on LEE’s urban homicide concentration page. Share = 105 / 18,253 = 0.575%. Later restatements of the 2023 murder total exist in secondary compilations. This page keeps the locked 18,253 so the two LEE pages still compose.
  • Share of murder is computed only for 2023, the year we have that locked denominator. Other years show FBI active-shooter counts without a fake year-by-year murder series from Statista or news roundups.
  • Interactive explorer recomputes in the browser from the downloadable CSV: year window, killed/incidents in the window, 2023 share callout, shareable URL (?start=&end=).
  • This page reports scale. Carry-law and ownership questions live on other pages.
Limitations. Active-shooter “killed” and UCR murder are different books: the FBI category includes some law-enforcement deaths in those incidents. A 0.58% share means this category is small relative to homicide. The incidents still matter. Some mass killings sit outside the FBI active-shooter file. 2014–2017 annual killed totals wait on a clean year table from those earlier PDFs. City and neighborhood concentration of ordinary homicide is a separate LEE page. Purchase timing is a different question.

Sources.