As 2025 winds to a close, new data show a surprising trend in the United States: this year is on track to record the fewest mass killings in two decades. That is according to data collected by James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist and leading expert on mass murder.
Fox manages the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database. He has had his finger on the pulse of mass murder and violence in America for decades, insisting more recently that there is something of a discrepancy between the prevalence and scale of “mass shootings” as a subset of “mass killings,” and the public’s perception of the problem. That is largely a product of wall-to-wall media coverage of what he said are in fact rare events — that is, mass shootings involving the deaths of four or more people.
Mass shootings, Fox noted, make up about 1% of all gun deaths in the United States. In a typical year, they claim between 100 and 200 lives, compared with roughly 17,000 lost to gun homicides.
But mass killings fell by roughly 24% this year compared to 2024, which follows about a 20% decline from 2023 to 2024. This year’s tally is down a whopping 59% from 2019, when a record 41 mass killings occurred, which Fox noted was an anomalous year.
Northeastern Global News spoke to Fox about the findings, and what they mean moving into 2026.
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