An unidentified Kansas City, Mo., police officer guards an entrance to Ward Parkway shopping center Sunday in Kansas City, Mo. The shooting at the mall left three people dead.

When an already wounded David Logsdon stormed into the parking lot of Ward Parkway Center on Sunday and started shooting, killing two people before he was gunned down by police, he infiltrated a seemingly safe facet of American society: the shopping mall.

But horrific rampages like Logsdon’s have become more frequent. The Rand Corp., a nonprofit policy group in Santa Monica, Calif., reports that since 1988 more than 60 attacks have occurred at shopping centers around the world. Several U.S. malls have also been recent violent crime scenes.

Six people were killed in February at a Salt Lake City mall when a teenager randomly shot nine people, killing five before he died in a shootout with police. A gunman killed a man at the crowded Boynton Beach, Fla., mall last Christmas Eve, then sent hundreds of holiday shoppers running for cover as he fired at police.

Earlier in December, a man was charged in a plot to set off four hand grenades in garbage cans at CherryVale Mall in Rockford, Ill.

There were also “specific warnings” about attack threats in 2004 at shopping centers in West Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, said Tom LaTourrette, author of the Rand report. Although no attacks occurred in either case, the Los Angeles warning “prompted the deployment of over 100 local and federal law enforcement officials to local shopping centers, leading to widespread panic and disruption,” LaTourrette said.

Why 51-year-old Logsdon ended up at Ward Parkway Center may never be clear, although he had worked at the mall and was turned down for a private security guard license. But police chief James Corwin said Logsdon had the mall in his sights.

One reason malls are targets is because they are public places that people are familiar with and know well, said Malachy Kavanagh, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade association based in New York.

“People who are prone to do this seek out locations they know and where people will be congregating and where it will create a sensation. … That’s why it’s so impactful when somebody does these things because it’s so out of the norm.”

Kavanagh, who estimates about 190 million people go to U.S. malls each month, said focus groups show that shoppers would be willing to undergo airport-style screening, including bag searches, if they believed there was an immediate terrorist threat. But beyond that, they don’t want to be impeded while they shop.

In a 2006 study for the U.S. Justice Department, the National Criminal Reference Justice Service reported that although malls have taken steps to improve security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, some “security gaps” remain.

Only a few states have changed laws to require background checks and set minimum standards for security personnel, the service said.

Ward Parkway Center, which was closed Monday, reopened Tuesday, but appeared light on shoppers and cars.