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Mass murder is the act of
murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...
ing a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
defines mass killings as the killings of three or more people during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the homicides. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others. A mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations whereas a
spree killing A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations wi ...
is committed by one or two individuals. Mass murderers differ from spree killers, who kill at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders and are not defined by the number of victims, and
serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
s, who may kill people over long periods of time. The incidents of mass shootings are continuing to increase.


By terrorist organizations

Many terrorist groups in recent times have used the tactic of killing many victims to fulfill their political aims. Such incidents have included: * 33 civilians killed in the Başbağlar attack by the
PKK The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of sout ...
on July 5, 1993; * 19 American airmen killed in the
Khobar Towers bombing The Khobar Towers bombing was a terrorist attack on part of a housing complex in the city of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, near the national oil company (Saudi Aramco) headquarters of Dhahran and nearby King Abdulaziz Air Base on 25 June 1996. At that tim ...
on June 25, 1996, by
Hezbollah Al-Hejaz Hezbollah Al-Hejaz ( ar, حزب الله الحجاز; literally Party of God in the ''Hejaz''), or Hizbollah in the Hijaz, was a militant Shia organization operating in Saudi Arabia. It was founded in May 1987 in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Provinc ...
; * 2,977 people killed by
Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...
in the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
of 2001; * 193 people killed in the
2004 Madrid train bombings The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's g ...
by
Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...
; * 334 (including 186 children) killed in the
Beslan school siege The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or the Beslan massacre) was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages ( ...
on September 1–4, 2004 by Riyad-us Saliheen; * 52 killed in the 2005 London bombings by
Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists. Incidents and fatalities ...
; * 166 killed in the
2008 Mumbai attacks The 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred to as 26/11, pronounced "twenty six eleven") were a series of terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist terrorist organisation from Pakistan, c ...
by
Lashkar-e-Taiba Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT; ur, ; literally ''Army of the Good'', translated as ''Army of the Righteous'', or ''Army of the Pure'' and alternatively spelled as ''Lashkar-e-Tayyiba'', ''Lashkar-e-Toiba'', ''Lashkar-i-Taiba'', ''Lashkar-i-Tayyeba'') ...
; * 156 children and teachers killed in the 2014 Peshawar school massacre by
Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
in
Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...
, Pakistan; * 130 killed as the result of the
November 2015 Paris attacks The November 2015 Paris attacks () were a series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks that took place on Friday, 13 November 2015 in Paris, France, and the city's northern suburb, Saint-Denis. Beginning at 9:15p.m., three suicide bombers ...
by
ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
* 1,095 killed in the
Camp Speicher massacre The Camp Speicher massacre occurred on 12 June 2014, when the Islamic State killed between 1,095 to 1,700 Iraqi cadets in an attack on Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. At the time of the massacre, there were between 5,000 and 100,000 unarmed ca ...
by
ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...


By cults

Certain
cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. Thi ...
s, especially religious cults, have committed a number of mass killings and mass
murder–suicide A murder-suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more persons either before or while killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms: * Murder linked with suicide of a person with a homicidal idea ...
s. *
Jim Jones James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American preacher, political activist and mass murderer. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. In what he called "revolutionary suicide ...
'
Peoples Temple The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization which existed between 1954 and 1978. Founded in Indianapolis, Ind ...
in
Jonestown The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...
,
Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
, where 919 people died in 1978 * Order of the Solar Temple in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
,
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, and
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, where 75 died in 1994, 1995, and 1997 *
Shoko Asahara , born , was the founder and leader of the Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. Asahara was sentenc ...
's
Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says ...
, which killed 14 in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...
, Japan, in 1995 * Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate in
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
, California, where 39 died in 1997 *
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a religious movement founded by Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibweteere in southwestern Uganda. It was formed in 1989 after Mwerinde and Kibweteere claimed that they had seen vi ...
in
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...
, where 778 died in 2000


By individuals

Mass murderers may be categorized in different categories, including killers of family, of coworkers, of students, and of random strangers. Their motives vary. One motivation for mass murder is
revenge Revenge is committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Francis Bacon described revenge as a kind of "wild justice" that "does... offend the law ndputteth the law out of office." P ...
, but other motivations are possible, including the need for attention or fame. Acting on the orders of
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, Vasili Blokhin's war crime killing of 7,000 Polish
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...
, shot over 28 days, was one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record.


Law enforcement response and countermeasures

Analysis of the
Columbine High School massacre On April 20, 1999, a school shooting and attempted bombing occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. ...
and other incidents where
law enforcement officer A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialists, local police officers, pr ...
s waited for backup has resulted in changed recommendations regarding what victims, bystanders, and law enforcement officers should do. In the Columbine shooting, the perpetrators,
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 – April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennet Klebold (; September 11, 1981 – April 20, 1999) were an American mass murder duo who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999. Harris and Klebol ...
, were able to murder 13 people, then commit suicide before the first SWAT team even entered the school. Average response time by law enforcement to a mass shooting is typically much longer than the time the shooter is engaged in killing. While immediate action may be extremely dangerous, it could save lives which would be lost if victims and bystanders involved in the situation remain passive, or law enforcement response is delayed until overwhelming force can be deployed. It is recommended that victims and bystanders involved in the incident take active steps to flee, hide, or fight the shooter and that law enforcement officers present or first arriving at the scene attempt immediately to engage the shooter. In many instances, immediate action by victims, bystanders, or law enforcement officers has saved lives. However, law enforcement programs and actions have so far been unable to reduce the total number of incidents. In 2020, a record number of 600 mass shootings occurred.


Criticism as an analytical category

Commentators have pointed out that there are a wide variety of ways that homicides with more than several victims might be classified. Such incidents can be, and have been even in recent decades, classified many different ways including "as a ''mass shooting''; as a ''school shooting''; as ''mass murder''; as ''workplace violence''...; as ''a crime involving an assault rifle''; as ''a case of a mentally ill person committing acts of violence''; and so on." How such rarely occurring incidents of homicide are classified tends to change significantly with time. "In the 1960s and 1970s,... it was understood that the key feature of number of suchcases was a high body count. These early discussions of mass murder lumped together variety ofcases that varied along what would come to be seen as important dimensions: * Time: Did the killings occur more or less simultaneously, or did they extend over several days, months, or years? * Place: Did the killings occur in a single location, or in a variety of places? * Method: How were the victims killed?" In the late decades of the Twentieth Century and early years of the 2000s, the most popular classifications moved to include method, time and place. While such classifications may assist in gaining human meaning, as human-selected categories, they can also carry significant meaning and reflect a particular point of view of the commentator who assigned the descriptor.


See also

*
Crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
*
Gun violence Gun-related violence is violence committed with the use of a firearm. Gun-related violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide (except when and where ruled justifiable), assault with a deadly weapon, and ...
*
List of rampage killers A rampage killer has been defined as follows: This list should contain, for each category, the first fifteen cases with at least one of the following features: * Rampage killings with 6 or more dead * Rampage killings with at least 4 peopl ...
* Mass destruction *
Mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...
*
School shooting A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple c ...
*
Suicide attack A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
*
Terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
* War crime *
List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll This is a list of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll. The list covers the name of the event, location and the start and end of each event. Some events may belong in more than one category. In addition, some of the listed events overl ...


References


External links


What makes a Mass Killer?

Mass Murder: A Small Person's Way to Immortality

Mass shootings interactive map

Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence


by
James Alan Fox James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy and former dean at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Fox holds a bachelor's degree in sociology (1972), a master's degree i ...
. Boston.com, January 16, 2011. {{Authority control (murder of 4 or more people) *
Murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...