Mass Murder in America: Trends, Characteristics, Explanations, and Policy Response

• Author: Jack Levin,James Alan Fox
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/10887679211043803
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Subject Matter: Special Issue Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10887679211043803

Homicide Studies

2022, Vol. 26(1) 27 –46

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DOI: 10.1177/10887679211043803

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Special Issue Article

Mass Murder in America:

Trends, Characteristics,

Explanations, and Policy

Response

James Alan Fox1 and Jack Levin1

Abstract

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest

among criminologists over the past decade. Lacking an existing and reliable data

resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own

database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result,

there is confusion regarding the nature and trends of such events. In this paper,

we rely on the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing

Database, which provides the widest coverage of incidents in the U.S. with four or

more victim fatalities, regardless of location, situation, or weapon. First, we present

trends in incidents and victimization of mass killings from 2006 through 2020,

followed by an examination of various incident, offender, and victim characteristics,

distinguishing among the major subtypes. Next, we detail a motivational typology of

mass murder and identify the common contributing factors. Finally, we consider the

potential effects of certain policy responses related to media coverage, mental health

services, and gun restrictions on the prevalence of mass killing.

Keywords

mass murder, mass killing, mass shooting, contagion, gun laws

Mass killing, especially involving firearms, has become a hot topic for criminologists

in recent years, so much so that special issues featuring relevant research were pub-

lished by Homicide Studies in 2014, the American Behavioral Scientist in 2018, and

1Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

James Alan Fox, Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy, Northeastern

University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Email: j.fox@northeastern.edu

1043803HSXXXX10.1177/10887679211043803Homicide StudiesFox and Levin

research-article2021

28 Homicide Studies 26(1)

Criminology and Public Policy in 2020. This level of attention stands in sharp contrast

to the near disregard of mass murder within the discipline several decades ago, even in

the wake of some high-profile incidents.

By contrast, scholars outside of the social sciences engaged in lively debates about

causal factors. When Richard Speck strangled and stabbed eight nurses in Chicago in

July 1966, some geneticists speculated about the possible role of an extra Y chromo-

some and whether the Texas drifter was a so-called “Super male” (Saxe, 1969). And

after Charles Whitman fatally shot 14 victims in August 1966 from the tower at the

University of Texas, neurologists considered the significance of a walnut-size tumor

found in his brain during an autopsy (Prutting, 1968).

Toward the end of the last century, serial killers like Theodore Bundy and Jeffrey

Dahmer drew interest from many criminologists, as well as the general public.

Meanwhile, mass murder continued to be ignored by all but a few scholars, despite

several devastating events—including the 1984 massacre of 21 at a California

McDonald’s, the 1986 fatal shooting of 14 postal workers in Oklahoma by a disgrun-

tled letter carrier in the first of a series of similar rampage shootings that spawned the

term “going postal,” the 1990 torching of a New York City social club in which 87

people perished, and the shooting deaths of 23 customers at a Texas restaurant in 1991.

Not only did many criminologists consider such events to be so rare that mass murder

was not a suitable focus for empirical analysis, but some assumed that mental illness

played a significant role, making such criminal behavior more the domain of forensic

psychiatry.

The year 2012, however, became a watershed, when three major shooting sprees—

at a California university, a Colorado movie theater, and a Connecticut elementary

school—suddenly had criminologists and other social scientists taking notice.

According to Google Scholar, the (approximate) number of books and articles pertain-

ing to mass shooting increased exponentially: specifically, from 48 in the 1980s, to

266 in the 1990s, to 1,080 in the 2000s, and surging to 11,300 in the 2010s. Besides

scholarship in this arena, mass shooting emerged in recent years as a funding priority

at the National Institute of Justice.

Show Me the Data

With interest in the topic growing among the public, politicians and professors alike,

criminologists and other social scientists were frustrated by the lack of official data on

mass shootings. Some researchers looked to the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide

Reports (SHR) as a resource, focusing on incidents with four or more victims, consis-

tent with the long-standing threshold for mass murder. Unfortunately, these data are

quite flawed in coverage of mass killing (see Overberg et al., 2013). Many incidents,

including some with large body counts, are missing from the SHR. Also, in many

cases, a police department will improperly include in an incident record all victims

killed or injured in the same event, making it appear as if it were a mass killing.

In the absence of a reliable resource on cases, several news organizations and aca-

demic groups attempted to build their own databases. However, because there was no