CARNAGE

America Just Set a Bleak Record for Mass Killings

This year has seen relentless slaughter unlike any other.

The deadliest six months of mass killings unfolded across the U.S. in the first half of 2023, eclipsing any other six-month period for at least 17 years. According to a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University dating back to 2006, the 28 mass killings endured between Jan. 1 and June 30 beat the previous record of 27—which was only set in the second half of 2022. The database defines a mass killing as an incident in which four or more people are killed, not including the attacker, within a 24-hour period. All but one of this year’s tally involved guns, and a total of 140 victims were slain in the massacres. “We used to say there were two to three dozen a year,” said James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University overseeing the database. “The fact that there’s 28 in half a year is a staggering statistic.”