By David Matthews
New York Daily News
WASHINGTON — The United States had a 52% increase in “active shooter” incidents in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to FBI data.
The report was released this week, nine days after a white nationalist targeted Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., and killed 10. It was released a day before 18 students and a teacher were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, about 83 miles west of San Antonio.
An active shooter is defined as an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area, according to the bureau. A mass shooting is defined as multiple homicide by firearm incidents involving four or more victims at one or more locations close to one another.
The FBI recorded 61 such incidents in 30 states last year — nearly 20% of which were also mass killings. All of the shootings combined killed 103 and wounded 140.
The year 2020, which saw pandemic restrictions in many states for much of the year, had 40 mass shooting incidents that resulted in 38 killed and 126 wounded. The bureau noted there were 30 such deaths each in 2019 and 2018, and 31 in 2017.
The independent research organization Education Week described Tuesday’s massacre in Texas as the 27th school shooting of the year.
It’s also the fourth-deadliest school shooting in the U.S. after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting (32 killed), the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting Connecticut (26 killed) and the Parkland shooting in Florida (17 killed).
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