Event security planning benefits from separating incident definitions, periods, and geographies. FBI-designated active-shooter incidents in the United States rose from 31 in 2017 to 48 in 2023, while the Secret Service recorded 34 targeted attacks in public or semi-public spaces in 2019. These measures describe different scopes, so they should not be treated as interchangeable.
Contents
- Recent U.S. incident volume and trend
- When incidents occur
- Where incidents occur
- Casualties and exposure
- Weapons, mobility, and connections
- Intervention and public-space attacks
Recent U.S. incident volume and trend
The FBI’s annual designations show a sustained level of active-shooter activity, with a notable increase after 2019. The FBI designated 31 incidents in 2017, 30 in 2018, 30 in 2019, 40 in 2020, and 61 in 2021. These figures are from the FBI’s Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021 report, and refer to incidents in the United States during each named year.
The subsequent totals were 50 incidents in 2022 and 48 in 2023. The FBI’s 2022 report described 50 incidents, 18% fewer than the 61 recorded in 2021. Its 2023 report described 48 incidents, a 4% decrease from 2022 and a 60% increase from 2019. The 2023 report therefore provides a recent comparison point, not a forecast of future incidents.
| Period or year | FBI-designated active-shooter incidents | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 31 | FBI, 2021 report |
| 2018 | 30 | FBI, 2021 report |
| 2019 | 30 | FBI, 2021 report |
| 2020 | 40 | FBI, 2021 report |
| 2021 | 61 | FBI, 2021 press release |
| 2022 | 50 | FBI, 2022 report |
| 2023 | 48 | FBI, 2023 report |
Across the longer comparison in the FBI’s 2023 report, 229 active-shooter incidents occurred from 2019 through 2023. That was an 89% increase over the 121 incidents recorded from 2014 through 2018. The comparison covers two five-year periods and should not be read as a count of event-specific incidents alone.
When incidents occur
The monthly pattern varies by year. June had the most FBI-designated active-shooter incidents in 2021, with 12, while December had the fewest, with one. In 2022, May was the highest month, with nine incidents. In 2023, February was the lowest month, with one incident. Looking across 2019–2023, June had 33 incidents and September had 11.
The day-of-week figures also differ between years. Saturday had the most FBI-designated incidents in 2021, with 14. Sunday had the most in 2022, with 12. For 2023, 35 of the 48 incidents occurred Monday through Friday, equal to 73%.
Time of day is another planning dimension in the FBI’s 2021 data. Thirty-four of the 61 incidents occurred during p.m. hours, equal to 55.7%. That is a majority of the year’s incidents, but it does not establish that an individual event held in the afternoon or evening will face a particular level of risk.
For event organizers, these figures are descriptive context rather than a substitute for a venue-specific assessment. They identify how the FBI’s incident set was distributed by month, weekday, and time period in the named years; they do not quantify the probability of an incident at a particular conference, concert, festival, or meeting.
Where incidents occur
The FBI recorded its 48 active-shooter incidents in 2023 across 26 U.S. states. California had the highest state count, with eight. Texas and Washington each had four, while Georgia and Pennsylvania each had three. In 2022, the 50 incidents occurred across 25 states and the District of Columbia, and Texas had the highest count with six.
Location categories provide a broader view of exposure. From 2019 through 2023, commerce locations accounted for 98 of 229 FBI active-shooter incidents, or 43%. Open-space locations accounted for 85, or 37%. Commerce and open space were the only two FBI location categories with incidents in every year from 2019 through 2023.
The category labels matter when applying these statistics to public events. “Commerce” and “open space” are not synonyms for every event venue, and the figures do not identify all conferences, exhibitions, fairs, stadiums, or festivals separately. They do show that incidents in the FBI’s multi-year dataset were concentrated in two recurring broad location categories.
Casualties and exposure
The annual casualty totals show why incident counts alone are incomplete. In 2023, FBI-designated active-shooter incidents caused 244 total casualties, counting people killed and wounded but excluding shooters. The total included 105 people killed and 139 wounded. In 2022, the FBI reported 313 casualties: 100 killed and 213 wounded. In 2021, it reported 243 casualties: 103 killed and 140 wounded.
The distribution by location category in 2023 was uneven. Open-space incidents produced 88 casualties across 28 incidents. Commerce incidents produced 131 casualties across 14 incidents. Education incidents produced 19 casualties across three incidents. The five highest-casualty locations accounted for 94 casualties, or 39% of the year’s total.
The 2022 figures also illustrate variation within a single year. Nine of the FBI’s 50 active-shooter incidents had zero casualties. The highest-casualty incident that year had seven people killed and 48 wounded. These observations describe the recorded range; they do not provide an average casualty count for a planned event.
| FBI measure | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active-shooter incidents | 61 | 50 | 48 |
| Total casualties | 243 | 313 | 244 |
| People killed | 103 | 100 | 105 |
| People wounded | 140 | 213 | 139 |
| Source | FBI | FBI | FBI |
Weapons, mobility, and connections
The FBI reported 61 firearms used across 50 active-shooter incidents in 2022. Those firearms included 29 handguns, 26 rifles, three shotguns, and three firearms of unknown type. The count is a firearm count within the FBI’s incident dataset, not a measure of weapons brought into events generally.
The 2023 location detail shows different equipment counts for different categories. Open-space incidents used 34 firearms: 26 handguns and eight rifles. Commerce incidents used 18 firearms: 12 handguns, five rifles, and one shotgun.
Mobility across locations was recorded in both years. Seventeen of the FBI’s 50 incidents in 2022 involved multiple locations. In 2023, 19 of the 28 open-space incidents involved multiple locations, while five of the 14 commerce incidents did. These figures support attention to movement between entrances, adjacent areas, parking, transit approaches, and other connected spaces, but they do not specify which locations were event venues.
The 2022 report identified a known connection between the shooter and the location or at least one victim in 48% of incidents. No known connection was identified in 52%. These percentages refer to the FBI’s classification for that year’s incidents and do not indicate motive or predict whether an event-specific threat would involve a known person.
Intervention and public-space attacks
The FBI’s intervention figures cover 229 active-shooter incidents from 2019 through 2023. Security personnel intervened in eight incidents. Those interventions resulted in six security casualties; four shooters were killed and four were apprehended. Civilians intervened in 22 incidents, producing seven civilian casualties.
The same five-year FBI dataset found that 58 incidents met the federal mass-killing criteria, equal to 25% of the 229 active-shooter incidents. This is a subset defined by a separate federal criterion, not a second estimate of all event-security incidents.
The Secret Service uses another scope for targeted attacks in public or semi-public spaces. In 2019, it identified 34 targeted attacks, each involving at least three people injured or killed. Those attacks were carried out by 37 attackers and injured 175 people while killing 108. The figures come from the Secret Service’s 2020 Year in Review and refer specifically to its 2019 public-space assessment.
For the broader period from 2017 through 2019, the Secret Service’s Mass Attacks in Public Spaces – 2019 recorded 89 attacks involving 92 attackers. Because the Secret Service and FBI use different definitions, inclusion rules, and measurement periods, these totals should be presented as separate evidence streams.
Together, the intervention and public-space figures point to several distinct planning questions: how security personnel would identify and communicate a threat, how people would move between locations, and how event teams would coordinate with public-safety partners. The statistics quantify recorded incidents and outcomes; they do not prescribe a single staffing level or security design for every event.