THE BIG WHITE LIE: Data Reveals Race, Gender, and Politics of U.S. Mass Public Shooters (1998–2024)

Across cases, most shooters leave no clear political affiliation. Entertainment media and news coverage often reinforce the idea that mass public shootings are mostly the work of white supremacists

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A newly updated dataset from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) compiles the demographic makeup of mass public shooters in the U.S. from 1998 through December 2024 (using the narrow, traditional definition: four or more people murdered in a public place, not tied to another felony like gang/robbery). Read alongside independent databases (e.g., the Violence Project) and federal snapshots (FBI “active shooter” reports), a clearer picture emerges—one that complicates common media shorthand.

Headline demographics

• Gender: The overwhelming majority of perpetrators are male (roughly 96–98% depending on the dataset and years compared). (Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Violence Project)

• Race & ethnicity: A majority of identified shooters are white, but whites (and Hispanics) are underrepresented relative to their population shares, while Black, Asian, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA), and American Indian offenders are overrepresented relative to their population shares. (CPRC’s 1998–2024 update places non-MENA whites at ~55% of offenders versus ~57% of the population; Hispanics at ~10.5% of offenders vs ~19.5% of the population; MENA at ~6.7% of offenders vs ~1.06% of the population; Asians at ~7.6% of offenders vs ~6.4% of the population.) (Crime Prevention Research Center)

• Frequency context: FBI’s separate “active shooter” series (not limited to 4+ fatalities and including attempts) shows 48 incidents in 2023 and 24 in 2024—a reminder that counts shift with definitions. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

Political/ideological signals

Across cases, most shooters leave no clear political affiliation. Among those who do, incidents tied to Islamist extremism (e.g., Orlando 2016, San Bernardino 2015) and far-right or white-supremacist ideologies (e.g., El Paso 2019, Buffalo 2022) are prominent. Academic and monitoring groups analyzing ideologically motivated killings (a narrower slice than all mass public shootings) have, in some years, found right-wing extremism dominating extremist-linked deaths; however, this is not the same as saying most mass public shootings overall are ideologically motivated or right-wing. Distinguishing “mass public shooting” from “extremist-related mass killing” and from “active shooter” is crucial for honest comparisons. (Axios, ABC News)

What about transgender perpetrators?

This topic has produced more heat than light. The most up-to-date synthesis points to rarity in absolute numbers but overrepresentation relative to population share in the CPRC’s “mass public shooting” category:

• CPRC (2018–2024 slice): estimates the share of identified transgender shooters at ~6.8× their estimated share of the U.S. adult population (where population estimates vary ~0.5%–1.0% depending on source and year). The absolute count is very small, which makes ratio estimates sensitive to single cases. (Crime Prevention Research Center)

• Independent media fact-checks covering broader “mass shooting” tallies (not the same as “mass public shootings”) stress that the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are cisgender men, with trans or nonbinary perpetrators accounting for only a handful of cases across hundreds—again, definition differences matter. (Reuters, Newsweek)

Notable post-2018 cases often cited in public debate include the Covenant School shooting in Nashville (2023)—a mass public shooting with six fatalities involving a trans-identified offender—and a small number of other high-profile shootings that either do not meet the 4-fatality bar or do not fit the CPRC definition but are nonetheless folded into looser “mass shooting” counts. These definitional shifts are why totals you see online can diverge so dramatically. (Reuters)

Media narratives vs. data

CPRC argues that entertainment media and news coverage often reinforce the idea that mass public shootings are mostly the work of white supremacists—a claim the center says is not supported when looking at all mass public shootings since 1998. The broader academic and monitoring literature, meanwhile, emphasizes subgroups (e.g., extremist-motivated shootings) where right-wing actors have in some years predominated. Both statements can be true within their respective scopes, and conflating scopes fuels confusion. (Crime Prevention Research Center, Axios)

Other recurring patterns

• Mental health & leakage: A substantial share of perpetrators engage with mental-health services before the attack, and many leak intent or grievance in writings or online posts. (Crime Prevention Research Center)

• Suicidality: Large portions of offenders are suicidal before or during the attack, especially in school-age cohorts, underscoring the value of threat assessment and behavioral intervention. (National Institute of Justice)

• Locations & defenses: CPRC asserts that the vast majority of mass public shootings occur in places where civilian carry is restricted, a claim debated by other researchers because of definitional and coding differences. (Crime Prevention Research Center, RAND Corporation, GVPedia)

What has changed since 2021?

• Expanded window: The CPRC dataset has been updated through December 2024, refining race/ethnicity shares and adding a transgender-status breakout for 2018–2024. (Crime Prevention Research Center)

• Recent cases: High-salience incidents in 2022–2024—Uvalde (2022), Buffalo (2022), Colorado Springs (2022), Nashville (2023), Lewiston (2023)—shift case totals and ideologic tallies at the margins but do not overturn the core demographic pattern: overwhelmingly male, racially mixed with whites as a plurality/majority, and no declared political ideology in most cases. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

Bottom line

• Men—almost exclusively—commit mass public shootings.

• Whites are a majority of known offenders but underrepresented relative to population, while several minority categories are overrepresented—a nuance often lost in headlines.

• Most shooters don’t clearly declare politics. Among those who do, Islamist and far-right/white supremacist motivations figure prominently in different slices of the data, but these represent subsets, not the whole.

• Transgender shooters are exceedingly rare in count, yet overrepresented relative to a very small population base in the CPRC’s tally for 2018–2024. Both facts can be simultaneously true—and both are easy to misuse without context. (Crime Prevention Research Center, Reuters)