Gun violence: A US scourge that refuses to die

More than 600 mass shootings, over 20,900 deaths mark yet another deadly year of bloodshed

On Dec 14 the families of 20 students and six educators shot dead in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, marked 10 years without them.

Most of the children were just 6 or 7 years old. It was the worst school shooting in the United States, so horrific that barely anyone thought anything like it could happen again. But it did.

On May 24 this year in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in the country's second-worst school shooting. And the parents of those children joined the parents of those killed in Connecticut in a lifelong struggle of grief.

There have been 48 school shootings this year that have resulted in injuries or deaths, the most in a single year since Education Week began tracking such shootings in 2018.

There have been 606 mass shootings in the US this year, says the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks the spread of gun violence and that defines a mass shooting as a single event in which at least four people, other than the person wielding the gun, are shot.

That means that 2022 is on par with 2020, in which 610 such shootings were recorded.

This year the US again led the world in gun-related deaths, more than 20,900, including homicides and suicide, Gun Violence Archive says. And the US has the highest number of guns per capita at more than 400 million weapons, meaning there is more than one gun for every man, woman and child.

"Many other countries have disadvantaged folks who are angry and alienated," Richard Berk, a professor emeritus of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post. "But guns aren't there."

Mass shootings in the US have followed a predictable and superficial script with a few exceptions.

They produce calls for greater gun controls including banning automatic weapons; gun advocates defend the right to bear arms. There are instant monuments to victims and there are candlelight vigils. The media profiles the victims and the shooter. The shooter's Facebook page or blog will be found and perhaps a note giving a hint of why the shooting happens. And there are heartfelt comments from politicians from the local level to the White House.

With few exceptions, most of the shootings fade from the national conversation, but the scenario unfolds again when the next one occurs.

There are those who offer a radical solution: arm good guys to take on bad guys, and that is what is happening in the US. The increase in the number of public shootings involving guns is causing people to arm themselves out of fear.

Gun sales peak after mass shootings, partly for fear of victimization and partly for fear of increased regulation. They rose after school shootings, amid coronavirus shutdowns, racial justice protests, the presidential election in 2020 and after the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

There is deadly gun violence in the US every day, and mass shootings, especially in schools, draw much more attention. However, those shootings represent a fraction of gun violence overall, said Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and co-founder of the Violence Project, which studies mass killers.

Mass shootings, Peterson told the Post, account for fewer than 1 percent of all people killed by firearms. They are "very rare, still, even though they're increasing".

"Mass shootings, by design, (are) meant to go viral, Peterson said. "The goal of them is fame, notoriety." Public mass shootings have a "psychological impact" on people, instilling fear of going to the movies or a grocery store, she said.

While mass shootings draw attention, most gun deaths in the US are either suicides or homicides, according to federal figures, with accidental or undetermined gun deaths representing a small fraction of the overall share. Almost 60 percent of gun deaths each year are suicides, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.