(WKBN) — The FBI has just released its 2022 Active Shooter Incidents in the United States report. It designated 50 shootings as active shooting incidents, an 18% decrease from 2021.
The report defines an active shooter incident as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area…Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.”
The report does not encompass all gun-related violence, citing exceptions including self-defense, gang violence, drug violence, contained disputes, controlled barricade/hostage situations, crossfire as a byproduct of another ongoing criminal act and an action that appeared not to have put other people in peril.
While 2022 had a decrease in active shooting incidents compared to those reported in 2021, which had a total of 61 incidents, it did see a 28.8% increase in casualties with 313 (100 killed, 213 wounded) compared to 2021 with 243 (103 killed, 140 wounded). The 2022 casualty count was the highest it has been in the last five years.
Another difference noted in the report was that of the genders of the shooters. In 2021, 60 of the shooters were male and one was female. In the 2022 report, 47 shooters were male, 1 female, 1 nonbinary and one was reported as unidentified. The youngest shooter was 15 years old while the oldest was 70.
Thirteen of the 2022 incidents met the mass killing definition, a slight increase from 12 the year before. Additionally, 21 law enforcement officers were wounded in 2022, compared to only five in 2021.
While there was an 18% decrease in active shooting incidents from 2021-2022, there is still an overall increase of 66.7% when comparing 2018 to 2022, showing an upward trend despite the recent decrease.
The following details the number of active shooting incidents in recent years:
- 2018: 30
- 2019: 30
- 2020: 40
- 2021: 61
- 2022: 50
In terms of location, Texas ranked highest with six active shooter incidents, followed by three in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and New York. Two incidents occurred in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. One incident occurred in Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington D.C.
In 16% of the incidents, citizen intervention or confrontation of the shooter resulted in the end of the incident. Two shooters were killed by armed citizens at the scene, nine died by suicide, 29 were apprehended by law enforcement, seven were killed by law enforcement, and three shooters remain at large.
The FBI conducted a study between 2000-2013 of areas most at risk for active-shooting incidents, ranking an open space as the most likely setting of an incident, followed by places of commerce, education, residence, government, houses of worship, and then health care facilities. In 2022, 23 of the 50 incidents occurred in open-space locations.
In 24 of the incidents, the shooter had a known connection to the location and/or at least one victim. In the other 26 incidents, there was no known connection.
