By Corey Bennett
Last Sunday afternoon, within 90 minutes, there were two 911 calls in Washington and Texas, both involving mass shootings. Causing a milestone for our nation. These two were the 37th and 38th mass shootings of 2023, which is the most mass shootings seen since 2022, which had 36.
The 21-year-old man in Dallas, who was supposed to be wearing an ankle monitor due to a previous assault charge, had entered a house and shot all five people who were in the house at the time. He then fled in a stolen car. While highway patrol officers pursued him, he then proceeded to shoot himself, according to the police.
Most of the 38 mass shootings didn’t actually happen in public places but rather in private homes.
The Washington Post actually refers to an incident that happened where four or more people were killed as “mass killing with a gun,” because “mass shooting” has no universal definition. Other organizations, though, have defined a mass shooting as occurring more broadly, so they report larger numbers, such as the “Gun Violence Archive.” This includes incidents in which multiple people have been shot, not regarding whether or not anyone died.
Killings that happened as a result of guns rose in 2019, though they dropped during the first year of the COVID pandemic. But as everyone started to go back to normal, the shootings started to creep back up.
According to Thomas Abt, the founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, this is “a tragic, shameful milestone that should—but probably will not—serve as a wake-up call” to lawmakers who have been opposing the gun regulations. “The rise in mass shootings is driven by many factors, but increasingly easy access to firearms is the primary cause,” he would continue.
James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern, pointed out that though mass killings are not epidemics, they represent just the visible part of the gun violence issue. Just in 2022 alone, over 48,000 people had died from gunshot wounds. which, when averaged, is about 132 deaths per day, which is more than half of the deaths that are caused by suicides.
Though this year’s mass shooting record is troubling, many believe that Americans have gotten better at understanding the mass shooting warning signs, essentially getting better at threat assessment strategies.
Though these shootings are still happening on a daily basis.
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