How did the number of mass shootings in 2025 compare to 2024 by state?
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Executive summary
Nationally, multiple databases and news outlets report that mass shootings in 2025 fell by roughly a quarter compared with 2024, but available reporting does not provide a consistent, source-verified state-by-state tally that allows an exact per-state comparison across both years; the major trackers (Gun Violence Archive, AP/Northeastern/USA Today database, and aggregated lists like Wikipedia) disagree slightly on totals and use different inclusion rules, which prevents a definitive state-level before-and-after table from the provided sources [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The headline: a ~24% nationwide drop, but only at the national level
Multiple outlets relying on the long-running mass-killing database compiled by researchers and journalists report that mass killings or mass shootings in 2025 are down about 24% from 2024 — a figure repeated by PBS, The Guardian, AP/Northeastern and others citing the same database maintainers and analysts [1] [5] [6] [7]. Gun Violence Archive, which uses its own near-real-time tracking and defines a mass shooting as four or more shot in one incident, shows 392 mass shootings in 2025 versus about 503 in 2024 in one published snapshot, indicating a similar proportional decline at the national level [2] [4].
2. Why a reliable state-by-state comparison is not available in these sources
The public reporting provided summarizes national trends but does not produce a reconciled, state-by-state year-over-year table: Wikipedia’s 2025 list catalogs incidents and includes state markers but is a crowd-edited compilation that reflects one definition and one running total, while GVA offers sortable data but the articles here quote only national totals in narrative form — none of the cited stories publish a validated matrix comparing every state’s 2025 count to its 2024 count that can be cited verbatim [3] [4] [2]. Independent aggregators like WorldPopulationReview and Statista present state-level summaries across long timeframes or single-year snapshots but the pieces in the dataset do not deliver a peer-reviewed, consistent 2024-versus-2025 by-state comparison in the provided excerpts [8] [9].
3. Definitions and methodology matter — they change the numbers
Different trackers define “mass shooting” differently (some count four or more shot, others define mass killings as four or more killed), and those definitional choices substantially affect counts and which incidents are included in each state’s tally; the Congressional Research Service, Mother Jones, GVA, and academic studies have all used varying thresholds and inclusion/exclusion rules, which is why national declines are reported but state-level shifts require careful harmonization before comparison [3] [8] [10].
4. What the available data and experts do say about state patterns and caveats
Reporting that drills down into state-level issues notes long-term patterns — for example, California historically records many mass incidents and is frequently the state with the most mass shootings in longer-term datasets — but the provided sources caution that year-to-year changes are volatile and that a small number of incidents can move a state’s ranking substantially in any single year [9] [5]. Experts quoted in multiple outlets emphasize that because mass killings are relatively rare events, a 20–25% change nationally could reflect normal statistical fluctuation rather than a durable policy-driven shift [1] [11].
5. How to get the exact state-by-state comparison if needed
A rigorous state-by-state comparison requires selecting one dataset and definition (for example, GVA’s four-or-more-shot definition or the AP/Northeastern mass-killings definition) and extracting incident counts by state for both 2024 and 2025 from that same source; the excerpts here point to the relevant primary trackers (Gun Violence Archive, the AP/Northeastern database, Wikipedia’s incident list) but do not themselves publish the reconciled per-state year-over-year table that the question requests [4] [3] [2]. Given the differences in counts reported (e.g., GVA’s 392 vs. other counts near 398), any final per-state comparison must note the chosen source and its methodological limits [2] [3].