The United States has had more mass shootings in the first month and a half of 2023 than days have elapsed this year. In these six weeks there have been 72 shootings that have left 2,237 dead, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
This week alone, at least two situations have been reported where an armed assailant has started shooting: first at Michigan State University, where three students were killed and five wounded, and most recently at a shopping center in El Paso, Texas, with at least one death and three wounded.
Record numbers in six weeks
2023 has been especially notable in counting these kinds of deadly events. “There hasn’t been a year where we’ve had 67 (mass shootings) in six weeks.” said This Tuesday morning, the executive director of GVA, Mark Bryant, told the US press. That same day at night, the NGO, created in 2013 to track and document armed violence in the US, increased the number.
The shooting this Wednesday night in El Paso was among those that increased the number to 72.
There is still no consensus on what constitutes a mass shooting, although the institution points especially to events of armed violence in which at least four people are killed or injured.
Last year, the GVA counted 647 mass shootings. Of those, 21 involved five or more deaths.
Mass shootings so far in 2023
January 4: Enoch, Utah
A man killed seven members of his family to later take his own life, in what the police described as a murder-suicide. The assailant shot his wife, his mother-in-law and his five children, ranging in age from four to 17.
January 21: Monterey Park, California.
A 72 year old man killed 11 people and injured at least nine others in a dance hall in a predominantly Asian-American community celebrating Lunar New Year. This was the deadliest armed attack in the US since May 24, 2021, when 21 died at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
February 1: Washington
A gunman attacked people on a bus and inside a subway station in southeast Washington, injuring three people and killed a transportation employee who tried to stop him.
February 13: East Lansing, Michigan
three students died and five other people were injured Monday on the Michigan State University campus by a 43-year-old shooter who was not affiliated with the study center and committed suicide shortly after the events.
February 15: El Paso, Texas
an armed man killed one person and injured three in a shooting at Cielo Vista Mall, a large shopping center in El Paso, Texas. Police arrested two suspects in connection with the crime.
Controversy over the use of weapons in the US
Gun control is one of the most complex and thorny issues in the US, increasingly polarized and where this type of issue is highly politicized.
The vast majority of Republicans defend the right to bear arms as reflected in the Constitution, while the other Democratic majority supports the reduction of the sale of rifles and an end to the proliferation of weapons in the country.
Each shooting fuels the heated debate between both sides. The Republican Party insists that the attackers are people with mental health problems, while their Democratic counterparts say that the responsibility lies largely with the wide access to large-caliber weapons.
The Uvalde massacre, where the vast majority of the dead were schoolchildren between the ages of 8 and 10, and the shooting where eight people died in a store in Buffalo, New York, reignited the debate in Congress and helped move the negotiations that resulted in the approval of the so-called Safer Communities Act.
The bipartisan project is the first to restrict the use of weapons in the last 30 years in the country, and was sanctioned by President Joe Biden last June. This includes strengthening background checks for gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21 and incentivizing states to pass so-called red flag laws, which allow groups to petition courts to remove guns from people considered a threat to themselves or others, among other provisions.
Biden himself recognized the “armed violence epidemic” that the United States is experiencing. “Even as we await more details about these shootings, we know that the scourge of gun violence across the United States requires stronger action,” the Democratic president said in a statement in January after the Monterey Park shootings and two days later in Half. Moon Bay, California, which left the least seven people dead.
“Once again, I urge both houses of Congress to act quickly and send the assault weapons ban to my desk, and take steps to keep American communities, schools, workplaces and homes safe,” Biden urged. at the beginning of 2023.
Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein of California; Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both from Connecticut, have filed a bill to reinstate a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons, as well as legislation to raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21.
The ban, which has met with strong opposition from the Republican caucus and gun rights activists, would block the sale of 19 specific fire devices that have the characteristics of those used by the military and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds. of ammunition.
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