There are different ways to count “shootings,” so the answer depends on what you mean. The most commonly cited national numbers for 2020 in the United States are for overall gun deaths and for mass shootings.
Overall gun deaths in 2020
Public health analyses of CDC mortality data report that there were about 45,000 firearm deaths in the U.S. in 2020, including homicides, suicides, and other gun-related causes. This was described as the highest annual number of gun deaths ever recorded in CDC data up to that point.
Mass shootings in 2020
Using a common definition of mass shootings (four or more people shot, excluding the shooter), one widely used database recorded 614 mass shooting incidents in the United States in 2020. Those incidents involved hundreds of fatalities and several thousand nonfatal injuries.
Why numbers can differ
Different organizations use different definitions and data sources, which leads to variation in published counts. For example, some sources focus only on incidents with four or more people killed, while others count four or more people shot (injured or killed), and still others focus on all shootings or only on deaths.