The overall number of casualties, when injuries are included, made 2012 almost twice as bloody as the next-worst years: 1999 and 2007, when massacres at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va., respectively, inflated the numbers.
Mass shootings make up only a small fraction of the country's overall gun crime. Between 2007 and 2011 -- which saw an almost unprecedented drop in violent crime -- the U.S. experienced an average of 13,700 homicides, with guns responsible for 67% of the killing, according to the FBI's crime reports.
But experts say it's the spectacular nature of the attacks that give public mass shootings such impact beyond the affected communities, with intense media coverage lending extra piquance: five or six or even seven attacks in one year may not be statistically significant, but they're emotionally resonant.
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