High-profile mass shootings involving three, four or more victims killed in a single incident receive extensive attention from media, policy makers and the general public. However, these traditionally defined mass shootings make up a small fraction of gun deaths in the United States. More commonly, firearm-injured patients (FIPs) present to trauma centers as a single victim or in clusters of multiple casualties, which do not achieve the definition of a mass shooting or a mass casualty incident (MCI). An MCI involves a high number of injured patients and overwhelms the resources of the local trauma center and/or regional trauma system. The impact of clusters of patients from multiple shooting incidents arriving to the same hospital can be significant, even though they are not regarded as "mass shooting" events.
* This article was originally published here
