What Changed

On July 30, 2026, the FBI released Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2025, its annual accounting of shootings that meet the Bureau's definition: one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.

The headline: 34 incidents in 2025, a 42% increase over the 24 recorded in 2024, but still below the five-year average of 43. Incidents occurred in 21 states and Washington, D.C. For the first time, the report also includes a section on potentially averted incidents, where tips and observations stopped an attack before it started.

The Numbers

As reported by the FBI:

  • Casualties (excluding shooters): 166 total, 51 killed and 115 wounded.
  • Law enforcement: 3 officers killed and 5 wounded.
  • How incidents ended: 16 shooters apprehended by law enforcement, 10 died by suicide, 5 killed by law enforcement, 2 killed by security personnel, and 1 remains at large.
  • Civilian intervention: Civilians intervened in 7 incidents, with 3 civilian casualties among those who intervened.
  • Where: Commerce 14, open space 7, government 6, education 4, houses of worship 3.
  • Planning: Roughly 68% of incidents involved planning by the shooter, up from 58% in 2024.

The FBI points agencies to its Active Shooter Attack Prevention and Preparedness program and to ALERRT, the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training center, and stresses that tips to law enforcement are among the most effective prevention tools.

What the report does not track is prehospital care: who treated the wounded, when bleeding control started, or how long it took to reach a trauma center. That gap is itself worth noting.

Why It Matters Operationally

Look past the incident count to the 115 wounded. Those are the people whose outcome can still change after the shooting stops. For them, the questions are medical: how fast someone reaches them, whether that person can control bleeding, and how quickly they get to a surgeon.

In many incidents, the first trained person to reach them is a police officer. Commerce and open-space settings, which made up most of 2025's incidents, are crowded, cluttered and hard to clear. In many systems, EMS stages until the scene is deemed safe enough to enter. That gap between "shooter down" and "EMS at the patient" is where officers with medical training, and a Rescue Task Force model that brings fire/EMS forward with police protection, earn their keep.

The officer casualties matter too. Eight officers were killed or wounded. Every one of them needed a partner who could treat them.

ODM's Position

Position: Active shooter training that stops at "neutralize the threat" is incomplete. Agencies and the budgets that fund them should treat casualty care as a core part of active shooter response, trained together, not as a separate first-aid box to check.

Evidence: The FBI's own numbers show more than twice as many people wounded as killed in 2025. Law enforcement apprehended or killed 21 of the 34 shooters, which often puts officers at or near the wounded early. Civilians intervened in seven incidents, which tells us the public is often on scene before anyone in uniform. The TCCC guidelines, updated May 1, 2026 and listed by the Joint Trauma System, and the JTS Damage Control Resuscitation CPG both rest on the same principle: early hemorrhage control buys the time definitive care needs. Civilian agencies apply that through TECC and their own medical direction.

Strongest counterpoint: Active shooter incidents are rare. The FBI counted 34 in all of 2025, spread across 21 states and D.C. Training hours are finite, and agencies face constant, high-volume demands: mental health calls, traffic, domestic violence, de-escalation mandates. A chief could reasonably argue that time spent on mass-casualty scenarios is time taken from calls officers handle every shift.

Our answer: Bleeding control is not a mass-shooting-only skill. The tourniquet and pressure dressing an officer uses at an active shooter scene are the same tools used at a crash, a stabbing or an officer-involved shooting. Integrated training pays off on ordinary calls, not only rare ones. That is why it belongs in the recurring budget, not a one-time grant.

What good looks like:

  • Every officer carries a tourniquet and hemostatic dressing on the body, and trains with them under stress at least annually.
  • Active shooter drills end with casualties treated and moved, not with the threat down.
  • Police and fire/EMS train Rescue Task Force operations together, with shared terminology and a shared plan for casualty collection.
  • Scenarios run in spaces that look like the real risk: stores, offices, parks, churches. Not an empty gym.
  • Training is funded in the base budget, so it survives when grant cycles end.

What Your Agency Should Do Now

  • Pull your last active shooter drill and ask: did anyone treat a casualty? For how long? Under what conditions?
  • Audit individual medical kits: who has them, where they are carried and when they were last inspected.
  • Schedule a joint exercise with fire/EMS that includes warm-zone casualty care and patient movement to a collection point.
  • Add bleeding control for wounds that a limb tourniquet cannot fix, including junctional and torso wounds, to recurring in-service training.
  • Brief command staff and budget officials with the FBI numbers. The 115 wounded make the case plainly.
  • Consider community bleeding-control education. Civilians were on scene and involved in seven incidents last year.

Bottom Line

The FBI's 2025 report counts incidents and casualties. It does not count how many of the 115 wounded depended on the first person who reached them. That number is the one leadership controls through training time and budget. Readiness is a budget decision, and it is made long before the call.

Sources