Drive-by shooting
type of assault that typically involves the perpetrator firing a weapon from within a motor vehicle and then fleeing
A drive-by shooting is a type of assault that usually involves the perpetrator(s) firing a weapon (typically a firearm) from within a motor vehicle and then fleeing. Drive-by shootings allow the perpetrators to quickly strike their targets and flee the scene before law enforcement is able to respond. The protection, anonymity, sense of power, and ease of escape provided by the getaway vehicle lead some perpetrators to feel safe expressing their hostility toward others.
Historical conception
The invention of the drive-by shooting is attributed to Nestor Makhno, commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. He attached a machine gun to a horse-drawn carriage, enabling his forces to quickly assault targets then flee before they could properly react. This vehicle, called the tachanka, would be used by multiple factions during the Russian Civil War.
Motor vehicles offer similar concealment for transport of weapons to crime scenes in situations like the 2015 San Bernardino attack, and can simultaneously serve as getaway vehicles. Using a vehicle allows the shooter to approach the intended target without being noticed and then to speed away before anyone reacts. Besides gang-related attacks, drive-by shootings may result from road rage or personal disputes between neighbors, acquaintances, or strangers unrelated to gang membership.
United States
There is no national data on the volume of drive-by shootings.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1259359. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Drive-by shooting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.