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The The US has had more mass shootings in 2023 than there have been days in a year so far.
Data collected by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization that collects and compiles information about gun deaths in America, paints a stark picture of gun violence in America.
The GVA defines a mass shooting as “the shooting of at least four victims, wounded or killed, not counting any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”
According to the Archive’s definition, there have been 208 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year. A total of 229 people died in the shootings.
The deadliest mass shooting so far this year occurred in January when a gunman opened fire in a dance hall during the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California.
A total of 12 people were killed and nine injured in what is now the deadliest shooting in Los Angeles County history.
The tragedy was compounded when another shooter killed seven people at his workplace in Half Moon Bay, California, just two days later.
One of the most recent mass shootings took place on Saturday, May 6, when a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, killing eight people and injuring seven.
Among these deaths, a disturbingly large number of children and teenagers were targeted. According to the GVA, in 2023, a total of 96 children between the ages of months and 11 years were killed by firearms. Another 217 were injured.
Among them were three children killed in mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee in March.
The shooting took place at a private Christian elementary school in Tennessee. All three of the children killed were 9-year-old first-graders. Three adult faculty members were also killed in the massacre.
Another 532 teenagers, defined by the GVA as those between the ages of 12 and 17, were killed by gun violence in 2023. A total of 1,296 teenagers were injured.
Four youths were killed by shooters targeted Sweet 16’s birthday party in the small town of Dadeville, Alabama. Another 32 partygoers were injured in the shooting.
Among the victims was the 18-year-old brother of a girl celebrating her birthday. He reportedly pushed his sister out of the line of fire to save her life.
However, mass shooting deaths account for only a small percentage of the total of 14,947 firearm deaths as of May 9.
Approximately 6,432 of these deaths are homicides, a total that also includes murder, unintentional or accidental firearm deaths, and domestic violence.
According to a report by a non-profit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group for gun violence, formed after the 2013 Sandy Hook school shooting, 70 women are shot each month by their partners in the US.
In one of the most disturbing cases of violence this year, a man in Utah shot his wife dead after she asked for a divorce. He then turned the gun on their five children, ages four to 17.
The shooter had previously been investigated by police for domestic violence against his wife and older children, but prosecutors declined to prosecute due to lack of evidence.
Some of these deaths also involved cases of accidental violence, often as a result of children obtaining unsafe firearms in the home.
In Houston, Texas, a 3-year-old girl shot her 4-year-old sister while the two children were playing with an unsafe firearm they found in their parents’ bedroom.
“You need to make sure you are a responsible gun owner by keeping them safe and secure,” said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez after his tragic death.
“It has to be more than just telling young children not to touch guns. You know, we need to do a little more. We see too many tragic situations like this.
One of the most striking examples of this occurred just days after the new year. In January, a 6-year-old student somehow obtained a gun belonging to his parents and brought it to school, where he fired a single shot at a first-grade teacher.
Victim, teacher Abby Zwerner has become one of 11,912 Americans so far injured by firearms in 2023.
But the largest percentage of gun deaths are still suicides. To date, there have been 8,514 deaths from self-harm in the United States.
According to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun suicides increased by almost 35% between 2019 and 2020, coinciding with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to GVA data, these deaths have not decreased significantly. Just over 24,000 Americans have used guns to kill themselves in 2021 and 2022 as well.
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