Gun violence: US passes 600 mass shootings for third straight year

Last year saw a shocking 690 mass shootings across the United States, up from 610 in 2020 and 417 in 2019, The Hill reported on Thursday.

“The country is three mass shootings away from 2022 being the second-highest yearly total since we began tracking data,” the GVA database researchers said on Wednesday. By Thursday, the country was just two shootings away from that dark milestone.

At least five people were killed and one dozen and a half injured in a mass shooting at an immoral nightclub in the US city of Colorado Springs earlier this week, and six were shot dead on Wednesday at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia.

A total of 39,820 people have so far lost their lives in gun violence in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Over 18,000 of the deaths were homicides, while around 21,500 were suicides.

“GVA had never logged a month of 60+ mass shootings before 2020. It happened five times in 2020, six times in 2021, and now six times again this year,” the GVA researchers said after the Colorado incident.

The US has experienced an average of 1.68 mass shootings per day so far this year, according to GVA.

The 2018 Small Arms Survey found that there were approximately 393 million firearms in civilian hands in the country, or 120.5 firearms per 100 people.

That number is much higher now, given the soaring increase in gun sales in the past few years.

US President Joe Biden in July said that a flood of guns was turning American communities into “killing fields” and vowed to reinstate a ban on assault rifles.

The remarks came in a White House ceremony to mark new gun control legislation that he signed on June 25.

“This has taken too long, with too much of a trail of bloodshed and carnage,” Biden said.

“The past many years, across our schools, places of worship, workplaces, stores, music festivals, nightclubs, and so many other everyday places, they have turned into killing fields.”