Mass shootings may be more common, but overall gun violence is way down from the 1990s

Pew Research graph depicting gun violence since 1993.

(Image credit: Pew Research)

published 3 December 2015

Following the mass shootings on Wednesday in Savannah and San Bernardino, many have highlighted the frequency with which these tragic attacks occur. By The New York Times' calculation, America averages one mass shooting a day, while FiveThirtyEight reviews data from several sources to conclude that mass shootings are probably more common than they used to be.

But, as FiveThirtyEight notes, overall gun homicides have significantly "declined from a decade ago, as has the overall murder rate." These charts from Pew Research make obvious the dramatic decrease in gun violence America has experienced since the 1990s:

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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