Mass murders hit lowest number in years – here’s why experts aren’t celebrating

A recent shooting at a children’s birthday party in California left four people tragically dead, marking the 17th mass killing in the US this year – the lowest number recorded since 2006.

The statistic, compiled by a database created by The Associated Press and USA TODAY in partnership with Northeastern University, offers a glimmer of hope.

As yet experts Expectations are quickly tempered, suggesting that this decline may represent a return to mean levels rather than a permanent recovery.

Mass murders are defined as incidents where four or more murders occur. People All but the criminals are killed within 24 hours. While the current numbers seem encouraging, James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University who manages the database, cautions against complacency.

“Sir Isaac Newton Never studied crime, but he says, ‘What goes up must come down,'” Fox said, suggesting the current decline is more likely a “regression to the mean” after unusual spikes in 2018 and 2019. “Will 2026 see a decline? I wouldn’t bet on it. What goes down must go back up,” he said.

According to Professor James Densley of Metropolitan State University, the rarity of such events means that the figures may be unstable. minnesota,

“Because there are only a few dozen mass murders a year, a small change may seem like a wave or a decline,” he said, reiterating that the 2025 numbers, though historically good, do not indicate that the problem has disappeared. Densley has pointed to an overall decline in murder and violent crime rates following the murder.covidThe COVID-19 pandemic, along with improvements in immediate responses to mass casualty incidents, as potential contributing factors. He cited the Annunciation school shooting in Minnesota, where only two people were killed despite more than 20 injuries, the low death toll being attributed to rapid bleeding control and trauma response by first responders.

Eric Madfis, Professor of Criminal Justice University of Washington,TacomaUnderscored the complexity of changes in crime rates, noting that they are “multi-causal”. He highlighted this while firing the gun violence While deaths are declining, the US still faces “an extremely high rate and number of mass shootings compared to anywhere else in the world”.

Madfis also noted the increasing number of states mandating school threat assessments, which may prevent some school shootings, although none of this year’s mass killings occurred in schools.

Christopher Carita, a former detective and senior training specialist for the gun safety organization 97 Percent, believes the 2022 Safe Communities Act played a role. The act provided millions in funding for gun violence protection programs, allowing states to invest in social supports for at-risk individuals or law enforcement and threat assessment initiatives. Carita noted the change in perspective: “It’s always been presented as a ‘gun problem’ or a ‘people problem’ and that’s been very controversial. I think for the first time, we’re seeing gun violence as a ‘both-and’ problem on a national level.”

However, Emma Friedel, assistant professor of criminology at Florida State University, cautions against focusing only on extreme events such as mass murders, warning of “missing the forest for the trees.” He emphasized the widespread, devastating impact of gun violence, including both murders and suicides. “If you look at deaths by firearms, both homicides and suicides, the numbers are staggering. We lose the same number of people every year to gun violence as we have experienced. Korean war. The number one cause of death for children guns,” Friedel said. He concluded that mass killings should be viewed as just one aspect of a much larger, broader issue.