(Los Angeles) Mass shootings are happening at a record pace in the United States in 2023, with the horror playing on repeat about once a week since the start of the year.
The carnage has so far claimed the lives of 88 people in 17 killings in 111 days. Each time, the killers used firearms.
The children of a Nashville elementary school, gunned down on an ordinary Monday. Northern California farm workers doused with bullets following a workplace dispute. Dancers in a ballroom near Los Angeles massacred while celebrating Lunar New Year.
Last week, four revelers were killed and 32 others injured in Dadeville, Alabama, when a shooting erupted on the sidelines of a 16th birthday party. Finally, a man just released from prison shot dead four people, including his parents, in Bowdoin, Maine, before opening fire on motorists on a busy highway.
“Nobody should be shocked,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was one of 17 people killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
The Parkland victims are among 2,842 people who have died in mass shootings in the United States since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University. This database lists killings that have killed at least four people, not counting the perpetrator, respecting the same standard as the American federal police (the FBI).
This bloodshed represents only a fraction of the deadly violence that takes place in the United States every year. Yet mass shootings are occurring with staggering frequency this year: once every 6.53 days on average, according to an analysis of data from The AP/USA Today. Only the year 2009 had been marked by so many tragedies over the same period.
From coast to coast, violence is triggered by a variety of motives. Murders, suicides and domestic violence, gang retaliation, school shootings and workplace vendettas. All of these acts have claimed the lives of four or more people at the same time since January 1.
Yet the violence continues and the barriers to change persist. The likelihood of Congress reinstating the ban on semi-automatic rifles seems remote, and the U.S. Supreme Court last year set new standards for reviewing national gun laws, challenging the restrictions imposed on this type of weapon throughout the country.
The pace of mass shootings since the start of the year does not necessarily herald a new annual record. In 2009, the bloodshed slowed and the year ended with a final tally of 32 mass killings and 172 deaths. These figures barely exceed the averages of 31.1 killings and 162 victims per year, according to an analysis of data dating back to 2006.
Gruesome records have been set over the past decade. Data points to a peak of 45 mass killings in 2019 and 230 people killed in such tragedies in 2017. That year, 60 people were killed when a gunman opened fire at an open country music festival. air on the Las Vegas Strip. This massacre resulted in the highest number of casualties in a mass shooting in the history of the modern United States.
“Here’s the reality: If anyone is determined to commit mass violence, they will,” summed up Jaclyn Schildkraut, the executive director of the government’s Rockefeller Institute Regional Armed Violence Research Consortium. It is our role, as a society, to try to put up obstacles and barriers to make this more difficult. »
But there are few indications at the state or federal level ― with a few exceptions ― that major policy changes are on the horizon.
Some states have attempted to impose stricter gun control within their borders. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a new law last week making criminal background checks mandatory for the purchase of rifles and shotguns, something the state previously required only for people buying guns. On Wednesday, a ban on dozens of types of semi-automatic rifles was approved by the Washington state legislature and is in the process of being approved by the governor.
Other states are under new pressure. In the conservative state of Tennessee, protesters descended on Capitol Hill to demand greater gun regulation after the deaths of six people at the private Nashville elementary school last month.
At the federal level, President Joe Biden signed a landmark gun violence bill last year, which strengthens background checks for younger gun buyers; prohibits access to firearms for more perpetrators of domestic violence; and helps states use laws that allow police to ask the courts to remove firearms from people who show signs they are at risk of becoming violent.
Despite the headlines, mass killings are statistically rare, perpetrated by a handful of people each year in a country of nearly 335 million people. And it is impossible to predict whether the events of this year will continue at this rate.
Sometimes the killings follow one another — like in January, when deadly events took place two days apart in northern and southern California — while other months pass without bloodshed.
“We shouldn’t necessarily expect this situation — mass killings every less than seven days — to continue,” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. Let’s hope that won’t be the case. »
Nonetheless, experts and human rights advocates lament the proliferation of guns in the United States in recent years, including record sales at the height of the pandemic.
“We need to know that’s not a way to live,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. We don’t have to live that way. And we cannot live in a country where guns are ubiquitous, everywhere and at all times. »
The National Rifle Association did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.
Jaime Guttenberg would be 19 today. Her father now spends his days campaigning for gun control.
“The United States should not be surprised by the situation we find ourselves in today,” said Fred Guttenberg. It’s all in the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. But we need to do something immediately to fix it. »
