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.”
Read it at The Associated Press
