WINNING? 2019 goes down as the 'deadliest year' of mass killings in the US

Mass killings - the majority by shootings - in the USA has hit the highest level for this century in 2019, and the highest in more than 40 years. The data was compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University, which has been tracking mass killings since 2006. Research actually goes back to the 1970s, when data was first collected, and no other year since then surpasses 2019.

A mass killing is defined by the researchers as an incident where more than 4 people are killed, not including the killer. Overall, there were 41 mass killings in the USA, 33 of those incidents were due to shootings. A total of 211 people lost their lives in 2019 due to these shootings. In 2017 there were more people murdered - 224 - but less shooting incidents than in 2019. It was the year of the Las Vegas shooting, which was the deadliest in history.

2019 saw two of the worst shootings in history within hours of each other: one at a WalMart in El Paso, TX and another at a bar in Dayton, OH.

James Densely, a professor and criminologist at Minnesota’s Metropolitan State University, noted that mass shootings have gone up, where homicides in the USA are going down.

“What makes this even more exceptional is that mass killings are going up at a time when general homicides, overall homicides, are going down,” Densley said. “As a percentage of homicides, these mass killings are also accounting for more deaths.”