On December 2, 2025, the Associated Press ran a story noting mass killings have declined 44 percent over two years, but it warned that this does not necessarily prove a sustained downward trend.
The AP noted that information collected in a database overseen by Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox showed “mass killings were down about 24% this year compared to 2024, which was also about a 20% drop compared to 2023.”
These are the lowest figures the AP has seen since 2006.
But the AP noted Fox’s belief that the killings could rise again, quoting him: “Sir Isaac Newton never studied crime, but he says ‘What goes up must come down.”
Fox added, “Will 2026 see a decline? I wouldn’t bet on it. What goes down must also go back up.”
The AP also quoted Metropolitan State University’s James Densley, who said, “Because there’s only a few dozen mass killings in a year, a small change could look like a wave or a collapse. 2025 looks really good in historical context, but we can’t pretend like that means the problem is gone for good.”
The article also quoted Florida State University’s Emma Fridel:
If you look at the deaths from firearms, both in homicides and suicides, the numbers are staggering. We lose the same number of people every year to gun violence as the number of casualties we experienced in the Korean War. The number one cause of death for children is guns.
A point of clarity on Fridel’s claims: The Defense Casualty Analysis System puts the total number of American casualties in the Korean War at more than 54,000. The highest number of gun-related deaths in the United States in a given year was 48,830, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Moreover, Fridel said, “The number one cause of death for children is guns.” This same false claim was made by former President Joe Biden, failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and myriad other leftists, including Hollywood celebrities. Breitbart News has demonstrated numerous times that this claim only works if people of voting age, i.e., 18- and 19-year-olds, are counted as “children.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at [email protected].
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