A mass shooting occurred near a youth center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and one at a Subway restaurant in Durham, North Carolina. Another took place behind a beer hall in Oklahoma City and another at a strip club outside of Columbus, Ohio. Two mass shootings ended parties in different Florida cities.
And that was just New Year’s Day.
By the start of the fourth week of January, the count had risen to at least 39 shootings in which four or more people were injured or killed, reported the Gun Violence Archive, which describes a shocking outbreak of violence across the United States that killed at least 69 people.
The deadliest of those shootings occurred on January 21 in Monterey Park, California, where a gunman killed 11 people and wounded nine others inside a dance hall. Authorities said the gunman, who later killed himself, was a 72-year-old man.
Then, on January 23, also in California, a gunman, reported by authorities to be a 66-year-old man, killed seven people and seriously injured at least one in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
The frequency of mass shootings and the variety of locations where they now occur contribute to the prevailing sense in the United States that such violence can break out anytime, anywhere.
It fuels calls for gun control, as well as the purchase of more and more guns. Public shootings fascinate America, but they can also normalize violence and desensitize Americans.
Criminologists say the prevalence of mass shootings is due in part to easy access to so many guns — a uniquely American feature — as well as a copycat effect.
The number of mass shootings in the US has been rising, though not steadily, since 2014, the Gun Violence Archive reports. There were 690 shootings with four or more victims in 2021, more than double the total in 2014.
The number fell slightly last year, to 647, but remained significantly higher than in previous years.
On average, there has been less than one mass shooting per day from January 1 to 23 in each of the past five years, the Gun Violence Archive reports, but the past two years have been on an upward trend, to 28 last year versus 26. in 2021 and 16 in 2018.
“There is no place in America that is safe from gun violence,” said California Senator David Min. “This has to stop. Stop”.
Americans own 42 percent of the world’s guns, a 2015 study found.
Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama who wrote the 2015 study, said nearly 40 percent of American men tell researchers they own a gun, so owning a gun by itself is not an omen. of who is likely to commit a mass shooting.
In a study of the 14 deadliest mass shootings since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, Lankford and a co-author showed that half of the perpetrators had not acquired their first firearm until the last year before their attack.
In Rockford, Illinois, three people were killed and two others injured in a shooting last month. No suspect has yet been publicly identified.
“Last year I lost 15 lives in my community,” said Tom McNamara, the Mayor of Rockford.
“There was no national news about it. It is sad that we live in a country where violence is normalized”.
By: This article was written by J. David Goodman, Amy Harmon, and Adeel Hassan.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6554381, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-02-01 20:10:07
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