The U.S. is the only country in which there are more civilian-owned guns than citizens
On May 24, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were killed by a shooter. Just 10 days earlier, a white gunman was accused of a racially motivated shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 10 Black people dead. These tragic incidents are among the latest mass shootings to rattle the United States, the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than citizens.
Sadly, mass shootings — the definitions of which vary — are just a fraction of the story. In the United States, gun violence incidents are on the rise. In 2021, nearly 21,000 people were killed by firearms (not including suicides), according to the Gun Violence Archive, an online database of U.S. gun violence incidents. That’s a 33 percent increase from 2017, the year that firearm-related injuries usurped motor vehicle crashes as the most common cause of death among children and adolescents.
In that same time frame, active shooter incidents nearly doubled. The FBI designates an active shooter as “one or more individuals who are engaged in killing or attempting to kill in a populated area.” In 2021, 61 such incidents in the United States killed 103 people. In 2017, the number of incidents was 31, though deaths totaled 143.
“I can’t think of an issue that requires more urgency and attention,” says Sonali Rajan, a school violence prevention researcher from Columbia University. “Gun violence is a solvable problem.” [Continue reading…]