When Does VictimsFirst Respond to a Mass Shooting?

Mass violence is an increasingly visible part of life in the United States. News of shootings, stabbings, and other violent incidents reaches us daily, often labeled broadly as “mass casualty” events. Amid this constant stream of information, it can be difficult to understand who receives our support—and why.

At VictimsFirst, we are committed to transparency about how and when we respond. Not every incident described in the media as a mass shooting or tracked by nonprofits falls within the scope of our work.

Many of these events stem from interpersonal or situational conflicts, rather than the type of indiscriminate violence our response model is designed to address.

This distinction is not a judgment about the seriousness of any crime or the harm experienced by victims. Every act of violence has profound consequences. However, our resources are limited, and we cannot respond to every mass casualty incident nationwide nor to crimes that our efforts were never designed to address. We are intentional in everything we do and always focus our efforts where they can have the greatest impact.

To guide these decisions, we use a formal rubric to determine when we engage. Each mass violence incident must meet specific criteria, and the level of our response depends on available resources.

That rubric is outlined below.

The incident must be intentional and criminal. We do not respond to accidents, such as workplace accidents that result in mass death. The act must be designated a crime by law enforcement.

Four or more people must have been killed, not counting the perpetrator. This threshold aligns with the most widely accepted federal definition of a mass killing and ensures our limited resources go where the need is greatest.

We do not respond to domestic violence incidents or interpersonal disputes.

Private residences and exclusively domestic settings generally do not qualify, unless the event carries a clear public or community impact.

The targeting must be random or indiscriminate. Our work is focused on people who were targeted by a stranger — or by someone whose violence extended beyond a personal relationship into the public. The perpetrator must have targeted the general public or a group without a specific relationship to the victims.

The act must have occurred in a public or semi-public space. Schools, nightclubs, businesses, streets, parades, concerts, and stores all qualify.

The act must constitute a recognized category of mass violence. We will respond to mass shootings, mass stabbings, bombings, intentional vehicular homicides, mass arsons, and similar mass casualty crimes.

The following do not qualify, regardless of death toll:

• Accidental crashes or non-criminal incidents (pile-ups, bridge collapses, etc.)

• Industrial accidents

• Natural disasters

• Non-criminal negligence

• Gang violence, even when innocent bystanders are killed or injured

• Incidents where mass death occurs incidentally during another crime — for example, a reckless police chase or a robbery gone wrong that was never intended as a mass killing

  
  

The perpetrator must have acted with deliberate intent to kill or maim.

The incident must have occurred within the United States.

We know that the weight of these events cannot be reduced to a checklist. But these criteria exist for a reason — clarity is a form of accountability.

Transparency also helps all crime survivors understand whether they qualify for our services — and helps us explain honestly when they do not. VictimsFirst was built to serve a specific population: survivors and families of random, public mass casualty crimes.

We regularly receive requests for assistance from victims of other crimes, all of which are serious and deserving of support. We guide them to other resources when we can, but we are not a general crime victims' assistance organization, and we would be doing a disservice to the victims of mass violence we exist to serve if we pretended otherwise.

If you have questions about whether a specific incident qualifies, or if you are a survivor or family member seeking support, contact us at victimsfirst.org.