Overall, 22 people were killed in a mass shooting in January. Last January 38 people were killed, but in January 2014 only 14 were killed in mass shootings. The fluctuation in deaths from year to year makes it hard to identify a definitive trend in the frequency and deadliness of mass shootings. But keeping track is important, as it allows us to understand the scope and severity of America's problem with gun violence.

Here are a few of the mass shootings in the GVA database that happened this past January:

Three were killed and five injured in a January 30 shooting at an Arizona house party.

A Los Angeles man and woman were killed in a shooting outside of a liquor store on January 22. The shooting left two others injured.

Teenage brothers are suspected of killing two men in a homeless encampment area in Seattle, known as the Jungle, on January 27.

GVA uses the FBI definition of a mass shooting, which is defined as a single event where four or more people are shot (not necessarily killed) and does not include the shooter in the tally. It's important to note, however, that there is not one universally accepted definition of what constitutes a mass shooting, and many methodologies differ from how GVA collects its data.

Some counts, like the one compiled by USA Today, only track mass killings, or events in which four or more people were killed. Mother Jones also maintains a database, which, like USA Today’s, only tracks events in which four or more people were killed, but Mother Jones excludes shootings related to "gang activity, armed robbery, or domestic violence." (GVA does not exclude shootings related to gang or domestic violence.)

Mass shootings are one part of America's gun violence problem

On the whole, regardless of differences in classification, deaths from mass shootings make up a small fraction of deaths from gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in 2013 alone, 33,636 people died in firearm deaths, or 92 people every day. But looking at 2013 data from the Mass Shooting Tracker, only 502 of those deaths — or 1.5 percent — were connected to mass shootings.

Most gun deaths in the United States (21,175 of 33,636 in 2013) are suicides. And most non-suicide deaths (11,208) are homicides. The rest are classified as accidents and police shootings. And while it's true that homicide rates have reached historic lows, no other developed country in the world has the same rate of gun violence as America. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times the rate of Sweden, and nearly 16 times the rate of Germany, according to UN data compiled by the Guardian.

This is not to say that Americans shouldn't care about mass shootings. But mass shootings are only one part of the equation in America's ongoing problem with gun violence.