America has a gun violence problem. What do we do about it?

This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it

Mass shootings have dominated the headlines, conversations and political debate around America’s gun violence problem for decades.

Perpetrated in many cases with military-style rifles, they have become a symbol for some of America’s obsession with guns, and high-powered ones at that, as well as a propensity for violence by some. Active shooter incidents have been on the rise in the two decades since a dozen students and a teacher were killed at Columbine High School in 1999.

While homicides account for much of the carnage and terror associated with gun violence, the most recent data from health officials shows that suicides account for the bulk — over 60% — of gun deaths in America. And gun injuries, while they rarely make the news, put a tremendous burden on both American families and the health care system, according to health researchers.

Active shooter situations represent just one kind of mass shooting. But even that wider category resulted in a mere 1% of all of the 191,897 gun deaths between 2015 and 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit which identifies mass shootings as cases in which four or more people are shot, and tracks them through public data, news reports and other sources. Mass shootings accounted for 2.8% of all of the 74,565 gun homicides during that five-year period, the GVA data showed.