Washington DC and US states with highest mass shooting rates | US News

The US states with the highest rates of mass shootings have been revealed in a new study spanning nearly a decade.

There have been 4,011 mass shootings across the country from January 2014 to December 2022, according to the study published on Wednesday by the JAMA Network Open journal. The study defined mass shootings as four or more people shot or killed.

The states ranged from zero mass shootings in Hawaii and North Dakota to a high of 414 in Illinois. The study, pulling from the Gun Violence Archive, laid out the rate of mass shootings per one million people.

It found that the highest rate was in the Washington, DC, with 10.4 mass shootings per million residents, followed by Louisiana with 4.2 per million and Illinois with 3.6 per million.

‘Geographical analysis of mass shooting events showed clustering around the southeast region of the US and Illinois,’ states the study.

‘Crime-, social-, and DV-related (domestic violence) mass shootings followed a similar pattern, while mass shootings that were not part of these categories were more evenly distributed across the US.’

States with the lowest rates, beside the two that had no mass shootings, include New Hampshire with 0.08 per million people, Idaho with 0.13 per million, Utah with 0.21 per million and West Virginia with 0.31 per million.

The four most populous states landed in the mid-range. California, which has the most residents, had a mass shootings rate of 1.04 per million. Texas had 1.05 per million, Florida had 1.25 per million and New York had 1.05 per million, according to the study.

It found the median to be 45 mass shootings per state for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In total, 21,006 people were killed or injured in mass shootings during the nine-year period.

For the time frame covered, about one-third of the shootings, or 27.3%, were social-related. Another 15.8% were crime-related, 11.1% were domestic violence-related and 1.4% were school or work-related, according to the study. The remaining 52% were not part of those categories.

‘Understanding where mass shootings occur across the country, and more about the context, such as how often these tragic events happen in homes, can point firearm injury prevention specialists toward how to prevent them,’ stated Ashley Brooks-Russell, a co-author of the study and director of the Colorado School of Public Health’s Injury and Violence Prevention Center.

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