The terror attack on an Orlando nightclub is the deadliest American public mass shooting, with more than 50 people killed and 53 people injured, according to the city’s Mayor. Officials have described the shooting as an act of terrorism, and said there are “suggestions” that the gunman “may have had leanings” towards a violent jihadist ideology.
The highest-casualty incident before Sunday was the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, which had a total of 70 casualties — 12 people killed and 58 injured — according to a 2014 FBI study of shooting incidents.
The San Bernardino attack last year, a terror attack in which a married couple opened fire on a holiday party staged for the husband’s co-workers, left 14 people killed and 21 wounded.
The April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, carried out with bombs made with pressure cookers, left three people dead and more than 260 injured.
American mass shootings with no links to terrorism have seen a high number of people killed and injured, but none with more than 100 total casualties, or more than 50 dead, according to the 2014 FBI study. A school shooting at Virginia Tech University in 2007 left 32 people dead. A school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut left 26 people dead, 20 of them first-grade students. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2016
