In the United States, Mass shootings are widely classified as incidents in which a shooter kills at least four or more victims. The rise of mass shootings has been closely associated with calls for more regulations on firearms through the state and federal governments. In general, mass shootings are now classified in news media as events where a shooter kills a large group of individuals.

Some mass shootings may involve gang violence, domestic violence, or terrorist acts. Several data centers and media outlets label the United States as the country with the most mass shootings annually in the world. However, mass shootings account for a small portion of the annual homicides, crimes, and deaths in the country. According to Mother Jones, between 1982 and 2022, the United States had on record 133 mass shootings, with most of those shootings occurring during the early 2000s and the present.

The deadliest mass shooting occurred on October 1, 2017, when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd from his hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, killing 59 individuals and injuring 867 others. In the aftermath of the shooting, the US Justice Department under former President Donald Trump banned bump stocks; however, the action is still under review by the Supreme Court.

In August 2017, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor had family, friends, and fans extremely concerned when she posted a Facebook video describing her suicidal thoughts over the previous two years. Coming on the heels of an incident in which she disappeared in Chicago two months earlier, the video set alarm bells ringing.

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Telling viewers she was living in a motel room in New Jersey, according to The Telegraph, the singer (who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder) was quickly shuttled into a nearby hospital for treatment.

In September 2017, O’Connor appeared on The Dr. Phil Show, to explain (via USA Today), “What kicked all of this off really was, I had a radical hysterectomy in Ireland two years ago and I lost my mind after that… I became very suicidal. I was a basket case. After the hysterectomy, I was mental.”