Handguns figured in the Virginia Tech shooting, the Binghamton shooting, the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the Oikos University shooting, and the 2011 Tucson shooting, but both a handgun and a rifle were used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The Aurora theater shooting and the Columbine High School massacre were committed by assailants armed with multiple weapons. AR-15 style rifles have been used in a number of the deadliest mass shooting incidents, and have come to be widely characterized as the weapon of choice for perpetrators of mass shootings, despite statistics which show that handguns are the most commonly used weapon type in mass shootings.