The first six months of the year were the deadliest in the United States since 2006 in terms of mass murders, raising the country’s gun problem to a new level.
From January 1 to June 30 of this year, the country suffered 28 mass homicides, almost all – except one – by firearms.
In those 181 days, the 28 mass murders resulted in 140 victims, including people killed by strangers or shot by loved ones, massacred in small and large cities, inside their own homes or outdoors in broad daylight.
“What a terrible milestone,” said Brent Leatherwood, whose three children were at a private Christian school in Nashville on March 27 when a former student killed three children and three adults.
Leatherwood, a leading Republican in a state that hasn’t strengthened gun laws, believes something must be done to get guns out of the hands of people who might turn violent. The shock of seeing bloodshed so close to home made him take a stand.
A mass murder is defined as an event in which four or more people are killed, not including the perpetrator, in a 24-hour period.
A database maintained by the Associated Press (AP) and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University has been tracking this large-scale violence since 2006.
March 2023 surpassed the previous record of 27 mass murders, set only in the second half of 2022.
James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, never imagined records like this when he began overseeing the database about five years ago.
“We used to say there were two to three dozen a year,” Fox said. “The fact that there are 28 in the middle of the year is an impressive statistic,” he added.
But the chaos of the first six months of 2023 does not automatically doom the last six months of the year, which could be calmer.
“There may be fewer murders by the end of 2023, or this could be part of a trend. But we won’t know for a while,” said Amy Barnhorst, a psychiatrist and associate director of the university’s Violence Prevention Research Program. Of California
Experts like Barnhorst and Fox attribute the increase in bloodshed to the rising gun population in the United States, a country that has more individual guns than people.
Despite the unprecedented carnage, the National Rifle Association, the country’s main gun lobby, maintains strong opposition to the regulation of firearms, including semi-automatics.
Source: TSF
