Mark Bryant counts shootings for a living.
It’s a dead-end job in the United States, where last year the average number of people killed by gunshots was more than two per hour.
Bryant has accounted for these shootings for nearly a decadedue to his role as executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, Gun Violence Archivea small non-profit organization that tries to track every incident of gun violence in the US in real time.
For him, all those years of counting the dead have come at a cost.
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“When we started this, he saw a child die and could remember his name. She could remember his age, what city he was in, and the circumstances of that shooting. Now I can’t do that“, says.
“I just don’t remember anymore.”
Bryant spoke to BBC News earlier this month, the day after five people were killed in a Kentucky bank shooting, and two weeks after six people were killed in a Tennessee elementary school shooting.
During the Interview, Bryant’s phone rang with the notification of another mass shooting. In this case he was at a funeral home in Washington DC20 minutes after a service for another man shot to death in March ended, police said.
Has been at least 170 mass shootings in the US so far in 2023defined as “mass” by the Gun Violence Archive when there are four or more people shot, not including the assailant. In those shootings, at least 233 people died.including the attackers themselves.
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One indication of the number of such incidents in the US is that the number is likely out of date by the time this story goes to press.
But mass shootings are just a small blip on the radar compared to the everyday horror of all incidents of gun violence In U.S.A.
From the beginning of this year through April 26, 13,386 people died in incidents of gun violence.
This includes a 20-year-old woman who was shot after parking her car in the wrong place.
Thousands more have been injured, like the 16-year-old who was shot after knocking on the wrong door.
more and more cases
Bryant, who describes himself as a “data nerd,” started the Archive of Armed Violence in 2013, after detecting a “big gap” on the availability and accuracy of the statistics of that moment. He wanted to do something about it.
“When we started this we thought we would do it for five years, but we just keep growing and growing and growing more and more,” he says.
Also Gun violence in the US continues to grow
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Between 2016 and 2021 the number of deaths from armed violence increased by nearly 6,000 cases, or almost 40%; the number of adolescents killed or injured by firearms increased by 47%; he number of children killed or injured by firearms increased by 60%.
Following these dire stats has affected Bryant, who says he gets about six hours of sleep a night. He goes to bed at 05:00 and wakes up at 11:00 in the morning.
“I’ve gained weight since I started doing this job…I’m not taking as good care of myself as I should,” he says.
“My wife came in the other day and found me literally asleep (at the computer). I had one hand on the computer mouse and the other hand on the keyboard.”
Bryant keeps an eye on the grim toll of US gun violence from his home in Kentucky.
The organization’s other 24 contract employees also work remotely and are spread out across the country.
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To provide what effectively amounts to a 24-hour record of gun violence data, Bryant noted that Daily reviews between 3,000 and 4,000 sources with his team: police websites, local news, social networks and blogs.
“It’s not physically difficult work, it’s mentally difficult,” he says. “I’ve become numb. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
“If I get an alert right now that there’s a mass shooting with 42 people shot, I’d say, okay, I’ll take this for the rest of the day.”
However, for some workers in your team the work is not so easy.
“We have had employees who, faced with cases of too many murdered babies, simply couldn’t take it anymore.“.
“I’m constantly looking for new people.”
“I don’t have rifles”
You might think that being so aware of the harm caused by gun violence – the leading cause of death for teens and children in the US – Bryant would be against gun ownership.
He fired his first gun when he was five years old. And he learned to shoot from the fathers in eastern Kentucky who would get together after church on Sundays and take aim at the rats that ran through the dumps.
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“I have pistols, revolvers“, says, most inherited.
“When a guy died, his wife would say ‘here, take this’… so I ended up with this weird collection.”
“I’m not against guns,” Bryant stresses.
“Some assume that by doing this project I am against weapons, but I have weapons“.
“Of course, I don’t have rifles. I don’t hunt,” he adds. “I have no interest in an AR-15. I have no interest in assault weapons.”
With the rise in gun violence in the US The United States has grown the demand for reliable statistics and with clear sources.
And Bryant’s work shows no signs of slowing down.
“I don’t understand what makes people like this,” Bryant says. “There’s a lot of anger and hate.”
Irresponsibility
He archive started as a project for the Slate website and was formally launched with the financial help of an entrepreneur interested in improving transparency.
It has become a go-to source for BBC News and most major news outlets, as well as for lawmakers and even the US Supreme Court, those seeking to understand gun violence in the country.
Although the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control collect similar data, your information is usually not published until months or years after the fact.
Bryant points out that his archive adds most shootouts to his website in about 72 hours.
“There is a level of irresponsibility in guns that needs to be addressed so people don’t die,” he says. “I want to stop the violence.”
However, The very act of collecting statistics on a politically and emotionally divisive issue like gun violence has brought him pressure and scrutiny.
“Sometimes I annoy people on the gun violence prevention side and I certainly sometimes annoy people on the gun rights side. But my best day was when I posted a story and they were both mad at me.” , it states.
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“That told me that I was doing my job correctly.“.
“We just collect statistics. We literally just record numbers,” Bryant says. “We’ll keep counting. That’s what we do, keep counting.”
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-65415920, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-04-28 14:00:06
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