Texas Led U.S. in Active Shootings Last Year

Texas led the U.S. in active shooter incidents in 2024, with one out of every six such shootings occurring in the Lone Star State, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest annual report.

Last year, federal officials recorded 24 incidents nationally in which “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” — the FBI’s definition of an “active shooter incident,” per the report. Four of those occurred in Texas:

• On Feb. 11, when a woman with a rifle wounded two people at Lakewood Church in Houston (listed as Incident 2 in the report);
• On May 30, when a man with a handgun killed one person at Refresco Beverages and Oncor Electric in Fort Worth on May 30 (Incident 6);
• On June 17, when a man with a rifle injured four people at a street corner in Amarillo (Incident 9); and
• On Aug. 29, when a man with handguns and a shotgun killed one person and wounded three others near a community center in Dallas (Incident 16).

There were twice as many incidents in Texas as in the two states tied for the next most active shootings, California and North Carolina, with two each. Texas also had four active shooting incidents in 2023, the second-most after California, which recorded eight.

By nearly every measure, 2024 marked a drop in active shooting incidents nationally. 2023 saw twice as many active shootings nationally, with 48 incidents recorded by the FBI.

One dozen Americans last year died across three mass killings, defined as incidents that killed at least three people excluding the shooter. More than seven times as many people, 85, died in mass killings the year before that, across 15 mass killings.

And overall casualties excluding shooters were down last year, with 23 people killed and 83 people wounded in active shooter incidents, compared to 105 killed and 139 wounded in 2023. 

Five-year trends

The number of active shooting incidents last year marked an anomalous low after eight consecutive years that each logged among the most active shooter incidents on record. 

But over the past five years, active shooter incidents in the U.S. spiked significantly. The FBI counted 223 such incidents from the start of 2020 to the end of last year — nearly 100 more than in the previous five-year period. That represents a 70% increase from the period from 2015 through 2019.

The prevalence of active shootings in Texas last year may have more to do with its population than its policies. In the most recent five-year span, the three states with the most active shooter incidents correlated almost exactly with their share of the U.S. population.

• California, with about 11.6% of the U.S. population, logged 25 ASIs, or about 11.2% of those recorded in the reporting period.
• Texas, with about 9.2% of the U.S. population, recorded 22 ASIs, roughly 9.8% of those in the past five years.
• Florida, with roughly 6.9% of the U.S. population, was the location of 13 ASIs, accounting for about 5.8% of those in the FBI records.

Still, the number of active shootings that took place last year was by no means low when compared to the past 25 years of FBI data. It’s still nearly twice the average active shootings recorded between 2000 and 2010, and more ASIs than in all but one of the first seventeen years of the millennium.

It remains to be seen whether the low in 2024 will continue to decline in future years.