![]() The definition of DV, however, goes further, including not just intimate partners but also a person with whom the victim cohabitates or shares a child or family members (United States Department of Justice n.d.). Specifically, this could include “current or former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, dating partners, or sexual partners,” and can occur “between heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2018). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an intimate partner is anyone with whom a person has a close, personal relationship. Recent research points to domestic violence (DV) as a precipitating factor for many mass shootings (Zeoli and Paruk 2019 Webster et al. Risk factors for various forms of gun violence - including community gun violence and suicide - are well-known but, given the rarity of mass shootings, less information is known about why people carry out mass acts of violence. In the wake of a mass shooting, people seek to understand why the incident occurred and how similar incidents could be prevented in the future. Mass shooting fatalities account for a small percentage (1%) of firearm homicide fatalities in the United States, but they receive a substantial amount of media attention and may drive political discourse on gun violence (Gun Violence Archive n.d.-a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics n.d.). Given these findings, restricting access to guns by perpetrators of DV may affect the occurrence of mass shootings and associated casualties. DV-related shootings had higher CFR than those unrelated to DV. Fifty-five perpetrators died during the shootings 39 (70.9%) died by firearm suicide, 15 (27.3%) were killed by police, and 1 (1.8%) died from an intentional overdose. We found significant differences in the average number of injuries and fatalities between DV and history of DV shootings and a higher average case fatality rate associated with DV-related mass shootings (83.7%) than non-DV-related (63.1%) or history of DV mass shootings (53.8%). We found that 59.1% of mass shootings between 20 were DV-related and in 68.2% of mass shootings, the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of DV. One outlier and 17 cases with unknown perpetrators were excluded from our main analysis. ![]() We conducted one-way ANOVA to examine whether there were differences in the average number of injuries or fatalities or the case fatality rates (CFR) between the three categories. ![]() We conducted descriptive analyses to summarize the percent of mass shootings that were DV-related, history of DV, or non-DV-related, and analyzed how many perpetrators died during the incidents. We reviewed news articles for each mass shooting to determine if it was 1) DV-related (i.e., at least one victim of a mass shooting was a dating partner or family member of the perpetrator) 2) history of DV (i.e., the perpetrator had a history of DV but the mass shooting was not directed toward partners or family members) or 3) non-DV-related (i.e., the victims were not partners or family members, nor was there mention of the perpetrator having a history of DV). ![]() Using 2014–2019 mass shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive, we indexed our data by year and mass shooting and collected the number of deaths and injuries. This study explores the role of DV in mass shootings in the United States. Research has not extensively focused on the role of domestic violence (DV) in mass shootings in the United States. Fatal mass shootings, defined as four or more people killed by gunfire, excluding the perpetrator, account for a small percentage of firearm homicide fatalities.
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