Workplaces are the most common mass shooting site, data shows

(NEW YORK) — The shooting in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank on Monday is the latest workplace-related mass shooting to take place in the United States over the last 60 years, according to gun violence data.

The Violence Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that’s funded by the National Institute of Justice, has found the current or former workplaces of perpetrators were the most common sites for mass shootings, which the organization defines as four or more people killed by a firearm.

“Most of the shooters had been fired,” the organization said.

Between 1966 and 2021, there were 53 workplace shootings carried out throughout the country, according to the Violence Project. This represented more than 30% of the 188 mass shootings recorded during that period, the organization said.

The second most common location for mass shootings was at retail locations, which represented 16.9% of all recorded mass shootings, and the third most common location was restaurants and bars, which represented 13.4% of all recorded mass shootings, according to the Violence Project.

With workplace shootings, the biggest motivator behind the incidents was an employment-related issue, such as a termination, which constituted 70% of the recorded workplace mass shootings, according to the Violence Project’s data.

When it comes to the victims of workplace-related violence, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 392 U.S. workers were workplace homicide victims in 2020. Roughly “30% of workplace homicide victims were performing retail-related tasks such as tending a retail establishment or waiting on customers,” according to the CDC.

The agency also compiled data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found “20,050 workers in the private industry experienced trauma from nonfatal workplace violence in 2020.”

Of those injured in these incidents, 73% were female, and 22% required 31 or more days away from work to recover, according to the CDC.