Mark Bryant put a glass of Coke near him. It’s 4 p.m. in Lexington, Kentucky, and the work day for this 68-year-old American promises to be long. Sitting in an old leather armchair, the man scans the computer screens in front of him.
His job is as atypical as it is depressing: he counts the dead and wounded by bullets in the United States. A work of Sisyphus, in a country where the right to carry a weapon is protected by the second amendment of the Constitution.
Among the fifteen shootings of the previous weekend, that of Saturday May 6 was particularly shocking. A man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a shopping center in Allen, Texas. Eight patrons, including three children, died, and seven others were injured before the shooter was shot. A drama unfortunately too familiar in the country.
Updated in less than seventy-two hours
From the office he has set up on the floor of his house, Mark Bryant, long white beard and small round glasses, runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization that has become essential. Of New York Times to the Supreme Court, the figures on its website, which can be accessed free of charge, refer. A pride for the one who set it up ten years ago. If the FBI or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publish data on the subject, they are less exhaustive and reactive.
Under pressure from the pro-firearms lobby, a law has also long restricted the ability of public bodies to conduct research on the subject. For its part, the Gun Violence Archive specifies the place and date of each shooting, whether children are among the victims, whether it is a domestic, involuntary, defensive incident, whether the police are involved… All of this updated in less than seventy-two hours. “It’s an invaluable contribution compared to what government agencies produce,” says Michael Siegel, professor of public health at Boston University.
To achieve this titanic job, Mark Bryant relies on a team of twenty-four people who work from home. Everyone peels the web, news from the media, the police, social networks and cross-checks their sources. A thick guide serves as a reference. While the FBI characterizes a “mass shooting” as four dead people not counting the shooter, there is no official definition of a “mass shooting”.
GVA has chosen to classify any news item where at least four individuals were injured by bullets, with the exception of the killer. Taken up by most of the media, this determination is considered too broad by supporters of firearms. Mark Bryant denies it. “If you only look at the number of dead, you miss all those who, injured, end up in a wheelchair or see their lives changed forever. »
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2023-05-28 16:00:07
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