There have already been a dozen mass shootings this year: 'We're in a paralysis'

A birthday party in California. A duplex in Wisconsin. Two family homes in Texas.

A church in Sacramento, California, then, about a month later, downtown in the same city.

Again, a family home, this time in Minnesota. A day later, two homes in Arkansas. A hotel in Mississippi. A grocery store in a largely Black neighborhood in New York. A Texas elementary school. Another family home, this time in Michigan. A medical center in Oklahoma.

In 2022, there have already been a dozen mass killings – all of them shootings –in the United States, which have left 76 people dead, according to The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.

Since 2006, roughly 30 mass killings a year have occurred in the U.S., which puts 2022 on track with 12 mass killings, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University in Boston.

"We're in a paralysis," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in the U.S. since 1900, seven have occurred in the past 10 years, according to Fox's data, including the attack at an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the massacre at a concert in Las Vegas in 2017.

At schools, more people have died in mass killings in the past five years than in the prior 12 years combined, according to The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University database.

The database defines a mass killing as incidents in which four or more people, not including the attacker, have been killed, and it includes forms of violence beyond only guns.

Gun deaths increasing across the US 

Overall, gun deaths are increasing in the United States: 2020 saw a record high at 45,222 gun deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. That was a 15% increase from 2019, driven largely by gun homicides, which rose by 35%, the analysis found.

While mass killings have remained roughly level around more than two dozen a year, all mass shootings, including those where people have been shot but not killed, have been steadily increasing in recent years.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are injured or killed in a shooting, 2021 saw the highest number of mass shootings of any year since 2014 at 692.

There were 610 mass shootings the year before in 2020 and 417 in 2019, according to the archive. From 2014 to 2018, there were an average of more than 334 mass shootings in a given year, the archive's data shows.

A 'this is happening here' moment

The three public mass shootings this year – in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma – took place within a few weeks of one another. A cluster of mass bloodshed like that is somewhat rare, Fox said.

The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University Mass Killing Database defines a public mass shooting as one with four or more deaths in a public place and not associated with any other criminal activity. Four of the mass killings this year were family-related, two were related to another crime, and three were in unknown or other settings, according to the database.

In Wednesday's shooting in Tulsa, Philip Tankersley, 27, sheltered inside his father’s room along with his mother after hospital staff warned them of the shooting across the street in the St. Francis Health System's Natalie Building.

“I wasn’t particularly worried because the two people that I need to look out for were in that same room as me,” he said. “But it was definitely a ‘this is happening here’ moment.”

Tulsa Police Department Chief Wendell Franklin said the gunman killed four people and was targeting a doctor who had recently operated on him.

The shooting occurred just over a week after a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. About a week and a half before that, a white gunman driven by a racist conspiracy theory opened fire in a Buffalo grocery store, killing 10 Black people.

In a Thursday night address, President Joe Biden urged Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines or, at the least, raise the age to purchase such weapons from 18 to 21 years old. He also pushed for stronger background checks and called for the passage of red flag laws, which allow police or family members to get a court order that temporarily confiscates firearms from a person who could present a danger to themselves or others.

“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done,” Biden said in a prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House. “This time that can't be true.”

'There are no 'the' solutions'

Public mass shootings grab headlines but are still extremely rare compared with other forms of gun violence, Fox said.

Suicides accounted for more than half of all U.S. gun deaths in 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins analysis of CDC data. According to The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University database, more mass killings occur in a family setting or during the course of another crime, such as gang or drug violence, rather than in public.

The average number of public mass shootings in the U.S. in a given year since 2006 is fewer than six, the database shows.

A fear also exists among many Americans who worry about becoming the victims of a mass killing, Fox said. Almost half of Americans were very or somewhat worried about mass shootings, according to an August 2019 Gallup poll, which was taken after mass shootings in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, and a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Benjamin said that to begin addressing gun violence, there needs to be a multidisciplinary and collaborative public health approach.

"People keep looking for 'the' solution. There are no 'the' solutions," he said.

Combining policy solutions, such as red flag laws, enacting licensing processes and expanding access to mental health care might begin to address the problem, he said, but it's a "lack of political will" that prevents action from starting.

"There's people who say: 'There's nothing we could have done, therefore we should do nothing. … There's nothing we can do about,' Oh, really? When I was in medical school, kids died routinely from leukemia. They don't die from leukemia routinely anymore, because we crafted medical solutions to solve the problem," Benjamin said.

Mass shootings not usually 'spontaneous'

Unlike cancer, though, Fox said, mass shootings are carried out because someone wants to. Mass shootings are often planned, and the gunmen are determined to carry out the killings. "It's not a spontaneous decision to go into a school, mall or restaurant and start shooting people," he said.

According to the Violence Project, a nonprofit that maintains a mass shooter database, more than 80% of mass shooters were in noticeable crisis before their attacks, and most had experienced increased agitation.

The Violence Project database also found that only four women have been the shooters in the 172 mass shootings the group studied. In two cases, the women partnered with a man, the group says.

Viewing gun violence solutions with a comprehensive public health lens could help in identifying potential gunman and preventing them from getting access to a firearm, Benjamin said.

"There are a series of measures that (can) work together to reduce the risk of this happening," he said.

Contributing: Joey Garrison; The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mass shootings in the US: Here's what the numbers show