Global Courant 2023-05-03 03:51:56
This year, the United States continues to experience a high frequency of mass killings. The recent incident in which four people were fatally shot in an RV in California marks the 19th mass murder of the year. Violent incidents have erupted in the United States and have been prompted by several factors. These include murder-suicides and domestic violence, gang reprisals, school shootings, and workplace grievances leading to revenge attacks. Mass murders are occurring at a staggering frequency this year, averaging nearly one per week, according to an analysis of The AP/USA Today data.
Four people found shot to death in an RV in a small community in California’s Mojave Desert. Four partygoers killed and 32 injured in small-town Alabama during a Sweet 16 birthday party that ended with a girl kneeling next to her mortally wounded brother. Six people, including three 9-year-old children, were shot at a Nashville elementary school.
Now the discovery of seven people shot dead in rural Oklahoma keeps the US on a fast track to mass killings in 2023 and could push the number of people killed to over 100 this year.
The Mojave killings over the weekend represented the 19th mass murder of the year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in conjunction with Northeastern University. That’s the highest number in the first four months of the year since data was first recorded in 2006. The deaths in Oklahoma have not been added to the database as of Tuesday afternoon.
This year’s Mojave shooting had killed 97 people in 19 mass killings, surpassing the record set in 2009 when 93 people died in 17 incidents at the end of April.
The death toll is a fraction of the total number of people killed by homicide this year. The database counts homicides that resulted in four or more fatalities, not counting the perpetrator, using the same standard as the FBI, and tracks a number of variables for each.
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“No one should be shocked,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was one of 17 people killed at a Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018. “I’m visiting my daughter in a cemetery. Outrage doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.”
According to the database, the Parkland victims are among 2,851 people killed in mass killings in the US since 2006.
Mass murders are occurring at staggering frequency this year, averaging nearly one per week, according to an analysis of The AP/USA Today data.
The 2023 numbers are even more striking when compared to the count for annual totals since the data was collected. The US recorded 30 or fewer mass murders in more than half of the years on the database, so to be at 19 is a third of the way remarkable.
The violence has erupted from coast to coast and has various motives. Murder-Suicides and Domestic Violence; gang retaliation; school shootings; and workplace vendettas. All have taken the lives of four or more people at once since January 1.
Students from a nearby school pay their respects at a memorial to those who died, at an entrance to Covenant School, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)
Yet barriers to change remain. The likelihood of Congress reinstating a ban on semi-automatic rifles seems remote, and the U.S. Supreme Court last year set new standards for reviewing the country’s gun laws, calling into question gun restrictions across the country.
The rate of mass shootings so far this year does not necessarily predict a new annual record. In 2009, the carnage eased, ending the year with a final tally of 32 mass murders and 172 fatalities. Those numbers are just above the average of 31.1 mass murders and 162 victims per year, according to an analysis of 2006 data.
Horrific records have been set over the past decade. The data shows a high of 45 mass murders in 2019 and 230 people killed in such tragedies in 2017. That year, 60 people died when a gunman opened fire over an outdoor country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. The massacre continues to account for the most mass shooting fatalities in modern America.
“This is the reality: If someone is determined to commit mass violence, they will,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. “And it’s our role as a society to try and put up obstacles and barriers to make that more difficult.”
But there is little evidence at the state or federal level—with a handful of exceptions—that many major policy changes are on the way.
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Some states have tried to enforce more gun control within their own borders. Last month, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a new law requiring criminal background checks to purchase guns and shotguns, when the state previously required it only for people who purchased handguns. And last week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a ban on certain types of semi-automatic rifles. But it faces a challenge from federal court.
Other states are experiencing another round of pressure. In conservative Tennessee, protesters came to the U.S. Capitol to demand more gun regulation after the March school shooting in Nashville.
At the federal level, President Joe Biden signed a landmark law on gun violence last year, tightened background checks for the youngest gun buyers, stopped more domestic violence offenders from owning firearms, and helped states use red flag laws that allow police to overrule courts. ask to take guns from people who show signs of becoming violent.
Despite the blaring headlines, mass murders are statistically rare, committed by only a handful of people each year in a country of nearly 335 million people. And there’s no way to predict whether this year’s events will continue at this rate.
Sometimes mass killings happen back-to-back — like in January, when deadly events in California happened just two days apart — while other months go by without bloodshed.
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“We shouldn’t necessarily expect this — one mass murder every less than seven days — to continue,” said Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who oversees the database. “Hopefully not.”
Still, pundits and advocates denounce the proliferation of guns in the US in recent years, including record sales during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need to know that this is not the way to live,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “We don’t have to live this way. And we can’t live in a country with guns everywhere, anytime, anywhere.”
Jaime Guttenberg would be 19 years old now. Her father now spends his days as a gun control activist.
“America shouldn’t be surprised by where we are today,” Guttenberg said. “It’s in the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. But we need to act immediately to fix it.”
