The US is often known globally for its shocking levels of violence, but acts of “family annihilation” or “familicide” rank among the most disturbing of crimes.
They occur when an assailant kills four or more of their own family members and often see the killer also kill themselves. These types of crime have increased dramatically this year, according to data from Northeastern University.
The still rare but shocking mass killings have occurred across the country, including one this week in Texas, in which an alleged shooter killed four adults in a family that had taken him in, and one last month in Montana, in which an assailant killed eight relatives, including four children.
After six such attacks occurred last year, the lowest number in at least two decades, there have already been at least ۱۷ this year.
Experts say they often occur after family estrangement or due to financial stresses, often on a father, or marital disputes. But, crucially, in the United States, the perpetrator is more likely to have easy access to a gun than many other parts of the world.
Such familicide is preventable, experts argue, but happens, in large part, because of the country’s high gun ownership rate and lack of firearm regulations, which makes it more likely that an assailant will impulsively shoot their family.
“There are way too many guns around and easy to pick up, and when someone is in some sort of a rage place, guns get picked up in anger,” said Jacquelyn Campbell, a Johns Hopkins University professor of nursing who has studied domestic violence homicide.
In June, a domestic dispute occurred in Muscatine, Iowa. Ryan McFarland had previously been charged with child endangerment resulting in a death; neglect or abandonment; armed robbery and burglary; and fraud, according to WQAD-TV.
After the dispute, McFarland shot and killed his wife and five family members before killing himself.
“I just wanted to say that I will forever love and miss my mom, Lesa, my sister, Ryle, my four brothers, Dakota, Austin, Mark and Ryan,” Jonathan McFarland, the sole surviving family member, said, according to KWQC.
In another case this summer, in Billings, Montana, Alan Smith’s parents had asked him to move out. Weeks later, he killed four generations of his family at a Sunday dinner.
The father of two of the children killed told the Associated Press that Smith had been verbally abusive and a hermit.
“There were many red flags and many people spoke out,” said Brad Ireland, the father. “No one listened.”
The most common triggers for such events are relationship estrangement, including a recent divorce or separation, said Katherine Keyes, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University and author of a ۲۰۲۵ murder-suicide study.
“Often in the intimate partner situation, it involves things like jealousy and just the kind of psychic pain involved in suicidal crisis overall,” Keyes said.
But while the rate of intimate partner violence is similar across all high-income countries, according to a study published in the Lancet, gun ownership and deaths are much more common in the United States than other developed nations.
When a domestic abuser, who is typically a man, has access to a gun, the victim is five times likelier to be killed, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. In the United States, there were ۲.۶ intentional homicides of women per ۱,۰۰۰ females in ۲۰۲۳, according to the World Bank Group. In the United Kingdom, for example, which has stricter gun laws and lower gun ownership, the number in ۲۰۲۱ was ۰.۷.
There does not appear to be significant research examining familicide rates in the United States versus other countries.
“There is a particular lethality and a particular impulsivity and a particular level of threat that occurs when a firearm is present, and right now in America we have more firearms than people,” said Doreen Dodgen-Magee, a psychologist whose sister-in-law and three nieces were shot and killed by her brother-in-law.
As such, reducing access to lethal means, like guns, “is one of the most effective and evidence-based suicide prevention and violence prevention interventions”, Keyes said.
Twenty-two states have red flag laws, which allow people, typically law enforcement or family members, to petition a judge for an emergency order that would temporarily remove firearms from a person found to be at risk of harming themselves or others.
Meanwhile, six states have passed bans on such protective orders, and three are considering doing so, according to the Trace, a news organization that covers gun violence. All nine are majority Republican states.
The National Rifle Association also previously expressed support for red-flag laws but later reversed its position.
Such laws “strip away gun owners’ rights without due process”, Randy Kozuch, an NRA lobbyist, wrote in a Daily Caller column.
Nathan Dahm, a Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma, which has among the nation’s highest suicide rates, sponsored the country’s first anti-red flag law.
When the Trace asked him about the connection between firearms and suicide and a colleague who had killed himself with a gun, Dahm said: “Everyone dies. That’s life.”
But there is evidence that red-flag laws can prevent suicides. The risk factors for suicide, such as psychiatric disorders, particularly depression, are often similar to those for homicide-suicides, Keyes said. After such mass murders, the shooters often kill themselves.
A study published in January in the journal Jama Health Forum examined four states that passed such laws and eight that did not, and found that they reduced firearm suicides by an average of ۳.۷۹ incidents ۱۰۰,۰۰۰ people.
Dodgen-Magee also does not accept the argument often used by gun rights advocates that firearms help people, including women, protect themselves.
Given the number of firearms in the United States, “if that were true, we would be the safest country to live in”, said Dodgen-Magee, who advocates for stricter gun safety laws.
Three decades ago, her sister-in-law and nieces left their home because they no longer were safe living with her brother-in-law. Despite a restraining order against him, he was able to purchase a gun and drove to Dodgen-Magee’s mother-in-law’s house where he killed his wife and children.
She thinks a red-flag law and a measure that forced the vendor to run a background check before selling the gun to him could have prevented the shooting.
Dodgen-Magee remains traumatized by it.
“Every year when I go into schools, when it’s back-to-school season and backpacks are on the wall, my body sort of short shuts down,” she said.
““It’s easy to dismiss these crimes because you just think, oh, that was a messed-up family. It is everyone’s family. It is everyone’s town, and until we do some things to protect women and children, it will continue to be.”
