From Jan. 1 to June 30, the nation endured 28 mass killings, all but one of which involved guns. The death toll rose just about every week.
Is it bad my initial reaction was, “That’s it?” This figure sounds really low when compared to a “mass shooting” which has similar criteria (4 victims shot, injured or killed), but the distinction is whether or not those shot died.
I’m pretty tired of this topic. Especially when it’s always framed as a mental health issue. Well, what about the mental health of everyone else aside from the shooters?? Are we just supposed to sit around and pretend like everything’s fine?
Our “leaders” aren’t even doing the basics like pushing for greater restrictions on purchasing involving background checks. In half the country it’s possible to buy a gun without any form of background check, then carry it around without any kind of license; that’s obviously not working!
Gun industry heavily relies on mentally ill people and their paranoid delusions to fuel their profits. They are the people who are buying dozens and dozens of guns.
“for example, a report published in 2017 by researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities. The authors estimate that of the 265 million privately owned firearms in the US, about half are owned by 3% of the US adult population. And while about half of gun owners own one or two guns, 8% of gun owners own 10 or more – a figure that amounts to about 40% of the total US gun stock, according to the report.”
Normal mentally well gun owners own own like 1-3 weapons, because why would any sane person need more than that? They aren’t making money off your average joe who buys a handgun/shotgun. They are making it off the nutbags who own 20 different combat rifles and all the tacticool accessories so they can cosplay on the weekends as soldiers and ‘train’ who sit around on the internet bragging about how ‘prepared’ they are for some doomsday scenario.
I had a similar reaction, way to bury the lead on that headline.
We have on average one mass shooting PER DAY
To my knowledge only one political advocacy group uses that definition. Prior to this group being founded in the last several years, the definition has been four or more killed in a shooting typically unrelated to any other crime. You know incidents like Sandy Hook, Columbine, Virginia Tech, or Las Vegas. You won’t really see any legitimate sources use that definition like the Congressional Research service or most academics.
