What are the odds of dying in a mass shooting in the US?
Evidence quality 5.0/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 5/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 5/5
- D5 Scope
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 5/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 5/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
- 5/5
Lifetime probability · lifetime, US adult
1 in 113,636
0.0009% lifetime chance
Most people overestimate this.
range 1 in 188,679 to 1 in 56,818
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≈ As likely as
Perceived
Mass shootings are one of the most-polled fears in the US. In Gallup's August 2019 wave, 48% of Americans said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried that they or a family member would become the victim of a mass shooting — the highest of three readings Gallup took in the wake of major incidents. Women, younger adults, and non-gun-owners report consistently higher worry levels, with a roughly 20-point gender gap that has been stable across waves.
Rough estimate: ~1 in a few thousand lifetime feels about right to many respondents
Source: Gallup (2019) — Nearly Half in U.S. Fear Being the Victim of a Mass Shooting
Actual
~50 deaths per year (US, public mass shootings)
US residents, pooled across age, sex, race, and geography
Show derivation
Uses the "public mass shooting" definition (4+ victims murdered with firearms in a public place, not attributable to underlying criminal activity) from the Violence Project database and the US National Institute of Justice. The Violence Project database records 1,446 fatalities across 202 incidents from 1966 through 2025, an average of roughly 24 deaths per year over the full 60-year window. The annual count is highly volatile — recent decades run higher than the long-run average, with the 2015–2024 window averaging closer to 50 deaths per year, pulled up by outlier events (Las Vegas 2017: 60 killed; Orlando 2016: 49 killed). Using ~50 deaths per year against a US population of ~335 million gives an annual hazard of ~1.49e-7 per person; compounded over a 59-year remaining adult life: 1 − (1 − 1.49e-7)^59 ≈ 8.8e-6, or ~1 in 114,000. The uncertainty band reflects the legitimate spread between databases and definitions, not a statistical sampling error.
Caveats: Almost every word of this entry depends on the definition. The Violence Project …
Almost every word of this entry depends on the definition. The Violence Project and the FBI "mass murder" definition require four or more people killed with firearms in a public place, excluding gang, drug, and domestic incidents — the figure above uses this definition. The FBI's separate "active shooter" series has a lower threshold (any shooter actively engaged in killing in a populated area, regardless of body count) and produces larger annual totals. Mother Jones uses a similar public-place criterion but lowered the threshold from four to three deaths in 2013. The Gun Violence Archive uses "four or more shot (not necessarily killed), any context" and reports hundreds of incidents per year — an order of magnitude more than the definition used here, because it folds in gang- and domestic-related shootings that the public-mass-shooting definition excludes. The pooled annual rate is also highly volatile: a single Las Vegas 2017 (60 killed) or Orlando 2016 (49 killed) event can double a year's fatality count. And as with all pooled crime numbers, geography and venue matter: schools, workplaces, places of worship, and entertainment venues carry very different per-visit risks, and the overall per-capita figure is the wrong baseline for any specific setting.
Regional breakdown
The headline figure averages across very different populations. Here’s how the probability varies by geography or context:
| Region / context | Lifetime probability | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| US lifetime (Violence Project / NIJ definition, 4+ killed) | 1 in 113,636 |
baseline figure from strict definition |
| US lifetime (Gun Violence Archive definition, 4+ shot) | 1 in 16,667 |
broader definition including all shootings with 4+ victims wounded raises the number roughly 7x |
Risks at similar odds
Other risks with roughly the same likelihood — useful for calibration.
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Under the “public mass shooting” definition used by the Violence Project database and the US National Institute of Justice — four or more victims killed with a firearm in a public place, not attributable to underlying criminal activity — the US has recorded roughly 1,446 deaths across 202 incidents between 1966 and 2025. That averages to about 24 deaths per year over the full 60-year window and closer to ~50 per year across the most recent decade, pulled upward by outlier events. Against a US population of ~335 million and a 59-year adult horizon, that works out to roughly 1 in 114,000 lifetime — a rate about 30× lower than the lifetime odds of being murdered by any means in the US, and roughly 7× higher than the lifetime odds of dying in a commercial plane crash.
The perceived-vs-actual gap here is large but uncommonly honest on both sides. Gallup’s 2019 poll found 48% of US adults “very” or “somewhat” worried about becoming the victim of a mass shooting, and the worry tracks news coverage of recent events rather than the underlying base rate. The gap is easy to explain — mass shootings are designed to be visible, the victim count in a single incident can be larger than a small town’s annual homicide total, and the psychological cost is not captured by the per-capita hazard. A careful read of these numbers is not “you are being irrational”; it is “the probability of personal involvement is low, the collective and psychological cost is not, and those are two different questions.”
Where the number doesn’t apply is almost everywhere you might look twice. The definition excludes gang, drug, and domestic shootings, which means the figure here is lower than totals from the Gun Violence Archive (“four or more shot, any context”) by roughly an order of magnitude, and lower than the FBI Active Shooter series by a meaningful factor as well. The annual count is volatile in a way the pooled average hides: a single Las Vegas 2017 event killed 60 people and by itself exceeds the long-run annual average. And the per-capita baseline is a poor guide to venue-specific risk — schools, workplaces, places of worship, and entertainment venues each have their own hazard profile, and a reader who wants to know “should I be worried here?” is asking a question this number cannot answer.
Related tidbits
Dying of heart disease is roughly 9,700× more likely than dying in a mass shooting over a US adult lifetime (1 in 12 vs ~1 in 110,000). Public coverage runs the inverse ratio.
1 in 6 adolescents will attempt suicide during their teen years. The lifetime odds of dying in a mass shooting are 1 in 110,000. Schools run lockdown drills for the rare threat and miss the common one sitting in class.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] US National Institute of Justice — Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories
Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories- Statistic
167 public mass shootings in the US 1966–2019 under the Violence Project definition; 20% of incidents occurred in the last five years of the study period- Excerpt
“"The project spanned mass shootings over more than 50 years, yet 20% of the 167 mass shootings in that period occurred in the last five years of the study period. More than half occurred after 2000, of which 33% occurred after 2010. The years with the highest number of mass shootings were 2018, with nine, and 1999 and 2017, each with seven." ”
- Source data from
- 2022-02-03
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- NIJ's writeup of the Violence Project database is the authoritative government-funded treatment of the "public mass shooting" definition: four or more victims murdered with firearms within one event, at least some of the murders in a public location, not attributable to underlying criminal activity (gang, drug, domestic). This is the definition used for the native and normalized figures. The NIJ figure of 167 incidents through 2019 is consistent with the Violence Project's updated total of 202 incidents through 2025 (35 additional incidents in ~6 years, matching the accelerating rate).
- Independence
- NIJ funded the Violence Project database, so these two sources are not independent — they describe the same underlying data pipeline. Treat as one authoritative source with a peer review layer.
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[2] The Violence Project — Mass Shooter Database
Mass Shooter Database- Statistic
202 mass shooting incidents and 1,446 fatalities in the US from 1966 through 2025 under the four-or-more-killed-in-public definition- Excerpt
“"The database contains comprehensive data: 202 mass shootings tracked from 1966 to 2025; 1,446 lives lost across all incidents; 2,246 non-fatal casualties." ”
- Source data from
- 2025-12-31
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- 1,446 deaths / 60 years ≈ 24 deaths/year as the long-run average. The recent decade runs higher — roughly 40–60 deaths/year depending on which single-event outliers fall inside the window. I used ~50 deaths/year as the central estimate for the normalized figure, with a low bound of ~30/year (typical non-peak years) and a high bound of ~100/year (peak year including a Las-Vegas-scale event averaged in). Against a US population of ~335M and a 59-year adult horizon, those bounds give lifetime odds of roughly 1 in 190,000 (low) to 1 in 57,000 (high), with the central value at ~1 in 114,000.
- Independence
- The Violence Project is the primary data collection; NIJ is the federal funder and reviewer. Mother Jones and the FBI Active Shooter reports use overlapping but meaningfully different definitions and produce different totals. See caveats.
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[3] Gallup — Nearly Half in U.S. Fear Being the Victim of a Mass Shooting
Nearly Half in U.S. Fear Being the Victim of a Mass Shooting- Statistic
48% of US adults worried very or somewhat about being a victim of a mass shooting (August 2019)- Excerpt
“"Almost half of Americans (48%) are worried that they or a family member will be a victim of a mass shooting, the highest reading of three conducted in the wake of a mass shooting. Currently, 48% of U.S. adults are 'very' or 'somewhat' worried, compared with 39% in 2017 after one gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas and 38% in 2015 after a San Bernardino shooter left 14 dead." ”
- Source data from
- 2019-09-10
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Used only for the perceived-risk side. The 48% figure is the share of respondents reporting very-or-somewhat worry, not an elicited probability; there is no direct conversion to a subjective lifetime probability. Gallup's poll is the best-known national instrument for tracking mass-shooting worry even though the series is short and event-driven.
- Independence
- Gallup telephone polling, entirely separate from the Violence Project / NIJ incident-database pipeline. Used only for the perceived-risk axis — measures public worry, not mass-shooting incidence or fatalities.