Mass Shooting

A mass shooting is a crime in which one or more attackers use guns to kill or injure multiple people in rapid succession, and mass shootings with multiple deaths are considered a form of mass murder. There is no single widely accepted definition of the term, and different organizations that track such incidents use different criteria, but it is generally understood to describe attacks that target victims, often indiscriminately, outside a combat setting, and it typically excludes gang violence, shootouts, and acts of self-defense. The perpetrator of an ongoing mass shooting is sometimes called an active shooter.