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The mass shooting that left eight people dead and seven injured at a suburban Texas outlet mall over the weekend is the most recent in an acceleration of mass killings in the U.S., data shows.
In a given year, the U.S. typically sees six mass shootings in a public place, and the most the country has ever witnessed was 10 in a year, according to James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied mass killings for 40 years.
The massacre at Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, on Saturday already marks the sixth public mass killing of 2023 — about one third of the way through the calendar year. That’s not a good sign, Fox said.
«Those are the kinds of events that make headlines, scare people and make them look around when they go into a supermarket or retail store,» Fox said.
Texas is one of two states in the U.S. that has seen 17 mass shootings so far this year. The other is California.How many mass killings in 2023?
There have been 22 mass killings in 2023, defined as four or more people killed, not including the perpetrator, according to the USA TODAY/Northeastern University/Associated Press Mass Killings Database.
Mass killing database:Revealing trends, details and anguish of every US event since 2006
All of the mass killings this year have been shootings, and twelve were among families, said Fox, who oversees the database.
If the crash in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday that left eight people dead is ruled intentional, it would be the 23rd mass killing, Fox said. A man has been charged with multiple counts of manslaughter in that incident, though authorities as of Monday have not publicly stated a motive.
The number of annual mass killings in the U.S. remained largely steady from 2006 to 2018 but started to increase in 2019, he said. Now 2023 has already seen more mass killings at this point in the year than in any other year previously, Fox said.
