Mass murder is at a low ebb. A new AP/USA Today analysis counts just 17 mass killings — defined as when four or more people are killed, excluding the perpetrator, within 24 hours — in the US so far this year. That pace would make 2025 the quietest year since the database began in 2006.

Although the year is not over — and rare events like these are subject to random fluctuations — it’s not just the AP’s tallies of mass killings that have fallen lately. The Gun Violence Archive has produced counts of “mass murders” and much more broadly defined “mass shootings” which are substantially down from the last few years, too. And perhaps most encouragingly, overall murders in American cities have been steadily dropping, month by month, since 2022.

Different types of killings don’t always move up and down in perfect sync. But this decade, both mass killings and the overall murder rate shot up the year of the pandemic and the George Floyd riots, and then dropped — at least back to their pre-2020 levels, and potentially further if current trends carry into 2026. The decline in mass killings may simply be part of this wider cooling in American violence.

But these trends don’t answer the key question: if mass killings are merely reflecting trends in violence, why is violence down? Part of it is likely just that America has calmed down a little since the high-stress events of 2020.

A post-pandemic rebound in active policing likely played a role too, given the 2020 dip in police activity and the strong evidence that police presence deters crime. Stops and arrests declined massively in 2020, thanks both to pandemic measures and a widespread demoralisation of the police amid the “defund the police” furore of that summer, but have gradually recovered since. Big-city police departments experienced a decline in staffing that appears to have levelled off as well.

Yet — as is often the case with crime trends — these explanations are incomplete, and police departments continue to grapple with a serious staffing crisis. What’s more, even if policing can reduce overall homicides, it is less likely to deter certain mass killings, such as those in private residences or premeditated by individuals intent on making a statement.

Mass killings can also be socially contagious, with some shooters openly citing earlier incidents as inspiration. Some studies find that mass killings “bunch” together in time statistically. It’s possible that the media is paying less attention to these events today. That may be due to the natural ebb and flow of public interest, with mass shootings now seeming less newsworthy than the latest political scandal, or because the dark media instincts that once glamourised serial killers and lavished breathless coverage on mass shooters are shifting toward assassins.

The last couple of years, of course, have seen multiple attempts on President Trump’s life, as well as the public assassination of health insurance executive Brian Thompson. These incidents have received widespread media coverage, and some on the political fringes have even cheered them — a phenomenon dubbed “Luigism” after the man accused of killing Thompson. The years ahead will tell us whether these handful of incidents become an enduring, statistically meaningful trend, and whether mass shooters receive less coverage as well.

As 2025 winds down, there is reason for cautious optimism. Multiple indicators — from the AP’s new tally of mass killings to broader measures of the national murder rate — point to a continuing decline. Yet trends can always reverse, and the US remains saddled with one of the developed world’s highest murder rates.

A single year of improvement won’t rewrite America’s crime story. What is needed is a sustained turnaround, a second “great crime decline” of the type the country enjoyed in the Nineties.