A survey published on Tuesday highlights the number of mass shootings at the start of 2023 as the worst in a decade.
About one in five Americans say they have a family member killed with a gun, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released Tuesday and deciphered by Forbes magazine. The survey underscores the deep nature of the country’s gun violence epidemic and the urgent need for law reform, as the number of mass shootings in 2023 marks the worst start to a year in a decade.
45,222 deaths in 2020
45,222. That’s the number of gun-related deaths in the United States in 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, according to the CDC. That is 124 deaths per day, which marks a sharp increase compared to previous years. These deaths are mainly due to homicides (nearly 5,000) and suicides (6,666), in line with broader trends in previous years. There have been 146 mass shootings in 2023 so far, well above the numbers at the same time in the past two years.
A recent spate of mass shootings, including Monday’s shooting at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, has reignited the long-running debate about gun violence in the United States. This year alone, mass shootings have already claimed the lives of more than 200 people in nearly 150 incidents, according to Gun Violence Archive. The toll, which excludes the perpetrator and fails to account for the injuries of hundreds of survivors, vastly underestimates the scale of the country’s gun violence epidemic. The problem is getting worse and the past few years have been some of the deadliest on record.
Leading cause of death of children and adolescents
Guns are now the number one cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle accidents in 2020, and although mass shootings dominate public discourse, the majority of gun deaths fire stems from their use in a large number of suicides and homicides. Political efforts to curb gun deaths are extremely half-hearted and woefully ineffective. Furthermore, the issue is intensely partisan and there is no political consensus to legislate on the subject at the federal level. The question is so intractable that polls suggest that a significant minority of Americans (just under half), mostly Republicans, think mass shootings are just normal for living in a free society. Plenty of evidence from around the world completely contradicts this notion.
The United States is a notable exception in the world, with gun death rates often dozens of times higher than other countries like France, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. The phenomenon of mass murders in schools, churches or shopping centers has no equivalent in the world. Access to firearms for American citizens is much easier than in other countries, mainly due to the interpretation of the Second Amendment of the American constitution.
