While it might have seemed that mass shootings subsided during the coronavirus pandemic, in truth the shootings never stopped. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that defines a mass shooting as one with four or more people injured or killed, not including the perpetrator, counted more than 600 such shootings in 2020, compared with 417 in 2019, and the carnage has continued into 2021, with hundreds of shootings so far this year. In an article from July, 2021, 370 people had already died in mass shootings. Whatever the exact number, it remains a persistent and uniquely American problem. In fact, there are so many shootings that people forget whether a report is old or new.

But some mass shootings remain unforgettable to the broader public because of the number of people killed, the randomness, or the vulnerability of the victims. Some even become known by a single place name like Newtown, Parkland, Columbine, and now Oxford.