By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

A shooting last weekend at a children’s birthday party in California that left four dead was the 17th mass killing this year — the lowest number recorded since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

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Experts warn that the drop doesn’t necessarily mean safer days are here to stay and that it could simply represent a return to average levels.

“Sir Isaac Newton never studied crime, but he says ‘What goes up must come down,’” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. The current drop in numbers is more likely what statisticians call a “regression to the mean,” he said, representing a return to more average crime levels after an unusu

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