
© Reuters/Neal HambergSWAT officers patrol the Copley Square area after explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts April 15, 2013.
Shootings in which a gunman wounds or kills multiple people have nearly tripled in the US in recent years, according to a new FBI report. The majority of those shooting incidents have occurred at businesses or schools, the report found.
The
study concentrated on 160 "active shooter incidents" between 2000 and 2013. Such incidents are defined as cases in which an attacking gunman shoots or attempts to shoot people in a populated area. The FBI excluded shootings that were gang- or drug-related.
The report found that during the first seven years involved in the study, an average of 6.4 "active shooter incidents" occurred each year. That average increased to 16.4 per year in the final seven years studied.
The largest portion of such incidents -
73 total, or 45.6 percent of all examined attacks - took place at a business, or "commercial environment," the FBI found. Just over
24 percent, or 39 incidents, occurred at schools. The rest of the attacks studied happened at other locations, including military and other government properties, residential properties, open spaces, places of worship, and health care outlets.

© Reuters/Eduardo MunozStreet artist Mark Panzarino, 41, prepares a memorial as he writes the names of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims during the six-month anniversary of the massacre, at Union Square in New York, June 14, 2013.
All in all, the incidents yielded a total of 1,043 casualties - 486 killed and 557 wounded, not including the shooters. Researchers found these totals and other data for the report "using official police records, after action reports, and shooting commission documents as well as FBI resources and open source information."
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