West News Wire: Mass shootings have once again cast a shadow on the 4th of July. More Americans have already died from gun violence in 2023 than from the Revolutionary War.
Every day this year so far, shootings have been in the news.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, at least 13,959 individuals have died in the United States from gun violence as of May 1. This equates to an average of about 115 fatalities each day.
85 children and 491 teenagers were among those who passed away.
Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois, and Louisiana have had the most deaths from these causes.
The gloomy death toll from gun violence includes 460 victims of officer-involved shootings.
The Gun Violence Archive lists 494 “unintentional” shootings as well.
There have been 184 mass shootings in 2023 so far, which is defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed. These mass shootings have led to 248 deaths and 744 injuries.
At least 13 K-12 school shootings have occurred so far this year, and the most recent one occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, when three pupils and three staff members at the Covenant School, a Christian school for preschool through sixth graders, were shot and murdered.
On February 13, a shooter opened fire at two different sites on the main campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, leaving three students dead and five others injured, according to authorities.
In just a few days in January, there were three mass shootings in California; in one of them, a shooter opened fire at a dance studio close to a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, California, leaving at least 11 people dead and 10 more injured.
Since 2014, the number of gun-related deaths in the United States has exceeded 39,000 per year, according to data from Gun Violence Archive. deaths from firearms in 2016, 2017, and 2018, when there were more than 50,000 fatalities annually. In 2022, there were 44,310 such fatalities.
A bill passed by Congress regarding gun safety was signed into law by President Joe Biden last June. It was the first gun legislation passed by Congress in many years.
However, proponents of gun control still call for stricter regulations. On the fifth anniversary of the devastating massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida politicians Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Rep. Maxwell Frost spoke with “GMA3” this month and urged Congress to take additional steps to reduce gun violence.
“Five years later, we feel like we’ve made some progress and then we were reminded that nothing has changed,” Moskowitz said.
A local councilwoman named Tabitha Taylor told CBS News that she was furious.
She claimed, “Now we are the victims of a mass massacre in our town just because some people wanted to enter and ruin a good night that people were enjoying.
“Gunfire has interrupted a family gathering that has taken place in our town for years because someone chose to pull a gun. How come?
Angie Willhite, a Shreveport police sergeant, told reporters on Wednesday that one of the injured was in a critical condition but that all other injured people were expected to live. There had been no arrests.
Willhite stated that it was difficult to acquire information from those who were there. “The level of cooperation is low. “We’re not getting a lot of cooperation. We’re going to hope for some quick and immediate cooperation that will lead us to the people we’re trying to find.”
According to Don Rodricks, a journalist for the Baltimore Sun, this attitude of heightened alertness as a result of gun violence has extended throughout the nation. At a performance he recently attended with his family, he remembered found himself searching for the exits “in case something were to happen,” he recalled.
Additionally, adults are able to experience behavioral health problems like substance misuse, social withdrawal, and even suicide ideation.
Additionally, children who have witnessed gun violence are more likely to develop long-term mental health problems, particularly if they already have certain risk factors.
