Each year, US police fatally shoot about 1,000 people, a toll greater than in any other developed country. To understand why, Vageesh Jain and Daniel Hemenway at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, analysed all reported US firearm homicides between 2005 and 20201. They found that people killed by police had an average of nearly six gunshot wounds, compared to nearly four for people killed by civilians. The authors say that the tendency for police to shoot multiple times might help to explain why US police shootings are so often lethal.
References
Jain, V. & Hemenway, D. Am. J. Prev. Med. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.02.004 (2025).
Neil, R., MacDonald, J. M. & Braga, A. A. Nature Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02169-7 (2025).