Within a week, there were two shootings in the United States, with many killed and injured. But crimes in Colorado and Virginia aren’t the only ones.
United States – Two shootings occurred in the United States in the space of a week. The first was on Saturday (November 19) at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub, where the perpetrator killed five people and injured 19 others before being overwhelmed by club guests and handed over to police. The second incident occurred on Tuesday (November 22) in the state of Virginia, in the small town of Chesapeake. At a Walmart supermarket, the night crew leader shot his employees in a break room and then shot himself, killing six people and injuring several.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (Firearm Violence Archive) Seven mass shootings occurred in the United States in seven days, in which several people were injured or killed by firearms. In addition to the bloodshed in Chesapeake and Colorado Springs, four people were killed at a cannabis farm in Oklahoma; a mother and her three children were shot and killed in Richmond, Virginia; additional mass shootings occurred in the states of Illinois, Mississippi and Texas. The Gun Violence Archive is about a mass shooting when four or more people are killed or injured by a gun. In the week before the all-important Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, 22 people died and 44 were injured from these mass shootings alone.
Gun violence could surpass the previous two years in 2022
As defined by the Gun Violence Archive, there was just 606 mass shootings in the US this year. This means that 2022 is shaping up to be one of the worst years in recent history in this regard. This year could surpass the previous two years in terms of gun violence: 2020 recorded 610 mass shootings, 2021 even 690.
The reaction pattern is always the same: “thoughts and prayers” come from the Republicans and the Democrats are calling for stricter gun laws. After a relatively short time, both fade away and mostly nothing happens, or at least not enough. Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin tweeted, “We join the Chesapeake community in mourning this morning. Heinous acts of violence have no place in our communities.”
Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action, a US organization against gun violence. She criticizes Youngkin’s reaction for missing two words, “perpetrator” and “shooting”. “It’s the damn guns,” she tweeted. “If more guns and fewer gun laws made us safer, America would be the safest country in the world. But 400 million firearms in civilian hands combined with weak gun laws gave us a rate of homicides by firearms 25 times higher than any other country”. The United States is home to approximately 332 million people. (Johanna Sol)
