Tag Archives: mass shootings

Outbreak of Mass Shootings in the last 3 weeks

Benicia Independent, by Roger Straw, May 2, 2023

Daily Mail: Louisville bank shooting is America’s 146th mass shooting in 2023 – more than the number of days so far this year – as nation braces to hit record

The U.S. is suffering a horrific and increasing level of gun violence over the last three weeks. The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) has  become the nation’s best source of information on mass shootings. These numbers came from the GVA on April 30 listing mass shootings over the previous 20 days.

    • 39 mass shootings in 20 days, just under 2 a day
    • 43 dead in 20 days, just over 2 a day
    • 191 injured in 20 days, just under 10 a day
    • Countless families, friends, communities wounded forever…

The numbers can’t begin to tell the stories of heartache and loss among families and friends and whole communities. But the numbers do tell the story of a nation in crisis. I put the details into a spreadsheet format:

Click on image above to enlarge. Or click here to download in spreadsheet format. Click here to go to GVA for detailed links to each incident.)

Previously on the BenIndy:

Fact Check: Gun violence surpasses car accidents as the leading cause of death for people ages 1 to 19

A young girl places on March 28, 2023, places an item at a growing memorial for the victims of the shooting at the entry to The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn. (AP)

PolitiFact, by Amy Sherman, March 29, 2023

A woman who survived a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, in 2022 made a passionate plea for gun safety legislation in front of TV cameras after a mass school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mom and mass shooting survivor Ashbey Beasley

After a police official finished a briefing on the deadly school shooting that left three 9 year olds and three adults dead, Ashbey Beasley stepped in front of the microphones.

“How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens — it has overtaken cars,” Beasley said March 27.

Beasley told PolitiFact that she was in Washington, D.C., on March 24 to attend the Generation Lockdown rally, where activists and lawmakers gathered to support an assault weapons ban, and then traveled to Nashville to see family and a friend. Beasley became a gun safety activist after she and her son, then 6 years old, survived the Highland Park mass shooting during a July 4 parade.

After previous mass shootings, including at a school in Uvalde, Texas, we fact-checked U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said that “the leading cause of death among children is a firearm.” We rated his statement Mostly True based on analyses of 2020 federal data. The same finding holds true for 2021 data on children and teenagers ages 1 to 19.

Data shows firearm deaths surpassed motor vehicle deaths
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes data on the leading causes of death among different demographic groups.
CDC data for 2021 shows that 23,198 people ages 1 to 19 died in 2021. Firearm deaths, 4,733, were the No. 1 cause. Motor vehicle traffic deaths ranked second at 4,048.

This data is similar to what researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found when they analyzed CDC data for 2020 deaths. The lead researcher for that report confirmed that the same point held true for 2021.

Beasley told us she is careful to say “children and teens” because she has heard people dispute the statement when someone refers only to “children.” She told us she got the 2021 statistic from Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.

Generally, researchers say they don’t include infants in their analyses because of certain conditions unique to babies.

It is technically correct to say that firearms are the leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 19 when they are combined into a single group, said Veronica Pear, an assistant professor in the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis.

“This is an eye-catching and powerful statistic, so I get why people use it,” Pear said.

But Pear warned that someone could wrongly interpret the statement to mean that firearms are the leading cause of death for each individual age within the 1 to 19 range.

Firearm-related deaths are exceedingly rare among babies and young children, while teenagers, especially older teenagers, have very high rates of dying from firearm-related injuries, Pear said.

“When all these ages are pooled together, the very high rates among teens are swamping the very low rate among young kids, such that firearms are the leading cause of death for the group as a whole,” Pear said.

The Nashville shooting occurred at The Covenant School, a small private Christian school serving preschool through sixth grade. If we look at death data for ages 3 to 12, it shows firearms as the sixth leading cause.

However, researchers we interviewed said it is valid to look at firearm deaths for ages 1 to 19. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us there is no official definition of “children.”

Hemenway co-wrote a perspective article for the New England Journal of Medicine about causes of death for people ages 1 to 24.

“For more than 60 years, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of injury-related death among young people. Beginning in 2017, however, firearm-related injuries took their place to become the most common cause of death from injury,” the article said. “This change occurred because of both the rising number of firearm-related deaths in this age group and the nearly continuous reduction in deaths from motor vehicle crashes.”

The CDC cites the 15 leading causes of death for people ages 1 to 19, but it does not pluck out firearm deaths. This data shows the top causes of death are accidents, homicide and suicide — all cagetories that include some firearm-related deaths.

The CDC does not classify firearms as a cause of death, but rather as a mechanism by which death occurs. “So, while our data does not allow us to say that firearms are the leading cause of death for this age group, it does show that firearms are the leading mechanism of injury mortality,” Brian Tsai, a CDC National Center of Health Statistics spokesperson, told PolitiFact.

Patrick M. Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, and Philip Cook, a professor emeritus at Duke University and gun researcher, both told us they agree it is accurate to say that in the 1 to 19 age category firearms are the leading cause of death.

PolitiFact ruling

Beasley said, “Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens — it has overtaken cars.”

CDC data for 2021 shows that for people ages 1 to 19, firearm-related deaths ranked No. 1, followed by deaths from car accidents.

That’s for the age range as a whole; it is not the leading cause of death for each age in that group. Firearm-related deaths are far more common among older teenagers than among young children.

We rate this statement Mostly True. [See the sources for this fact-check]

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird and Senior Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.


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Stephen Golub: Guns: Here We Go Again… and again…and again…

Unhappy New Year

A Promised Land, by Stephen Golub, January 25, 2023

Benicia author Stephen Golub, Benicia CA, A Promised Land

California has kicked off 2023 with a bang: two mass shootings in 72 hours. (Mass shootings constitute events in which four or more people are injured or killed, not including the murderer.) This has probably been the country’s most massacre-intensive January ever – and certainly since the Gun Violence Archive started tracking this data in 2014. Only a small fraction of these nearly twice-daily horrors (647 in 2022) gets much media coverage. Still, this seems like a nightmarish Groundhog Day.

Over the course of nearly nine years, the satirical, fake news outlet the Onion has regularly summarized such slaughters 30 times with the same headline,  “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

I won’t regurgitate most of the grisly statistics you’ve heard before. But it’s worth noting a few:

Family Values

Here’s one more statistical nugget: America is the only wealthy country in which gun violence is the top cause of death for children and teens.

The comparative data leaves other rich nations buried (so to speak) in the dust. Firearms killed 4,357 young people here in 2020. The next highest nations, based on a recent research review of selected similar societies: Canada and France, with 48 each. Correcting for Canada’s far smaller population, its gun mortality rate for folks aged one to 19 is still less than 10 percent of ours.

Even that shameful ratio under-represents how bad our relative situation is. Canada and France themselves have much higher rates than other wealthy nations. The next highest number on the list is that of Germany, where only 14 young people died due to guns in 2020. Given that its population is one-quarter of ours, that figure would extrapolate to just 56 if we were the same size.

Why?

Now, this is not to say that most gun-owners are fanatics about their weapons. Many are responsible, or support at least some gun safety measures, or legitimately use firearms for protection or hunting.

Still, why are so many Americans (though by no means the majority ) so dedicated to deadly weapons, including assault rifles?

Pick your poison. The National Rifle Association. Our distorted democracy. The self-perpetuating cycle of easy access and ease of use making for a way of life. The legacy of racial animus. The fear of guns being taken away, which drives the purchase of yet more. The related conviction that more guns equal more protection from more guns. Gun collection as a hobby. Americans loving (ahem) Freedom, as long as it’s that of a gun owner and not a gun victim. The reliance on a Second Amendment adopted at a time of muskets and citizen militias. Or maybe all of the above.

There’s yet another view of what drives our gun culture and gun deaths, courtesy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Terminator 2. Though the context for this clip was the threat of nuclear holocaust, it works equally well for a different kind of self-destruction:

Another answer is even simpler and better than the one Ahnold offers. It’s asserted by the Australian comic Jim Jefferies, in mimicing a hypothetical American gun devotee:

“I like guns!”

Here are the two parts of Jeffries’ brilliant commentary on Americans’ penchant for firearms – though be forewarned, he’s very profane, is politically incorrect, and employs a word that’s apparently much more commonly accepted in Australia than here:

A Shot at Success?

Is there any light at the end of the gun barrel? There are glimmers of hope.

In 2022, the United States adopted the first national gun control law in decades, with even a bit of Republican buy-in. It looks like legislators voting for the bill suffered few if any negative electoral consequences. Though an increasing number of states have adopted “open carry” laws – which allow gun owners to carry firearms in public without the need for permits – last year also saw a range of state-level victories for gun safety.

As I’ve noted, loads of evidence indicates that countries and states with stronger gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths; maybe someday such data will mean something for our nation’s public policy.

In fact, we’ve seen instances of public opinion or legislation shifting on other issues more than previously thought possible. The examples range from acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage to last year’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which for all of its flaws was an unprecedented environmental step forward.

Still, manyof us have remained politically unmoved by the Sandy Hook and Uvalde school massacres, by a lone Las Vegas gunman murdering 60 concert-goers and injuring over 400 others, and by so many other atrocities that we lose count.

Now, the sure way to lose the fight is to lose hope. But for now, Americans face the reality of constantly shooting ourselves in the foot, the head, and everywhere in-between.


Stephen Golub, Benicia – A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land:  Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.

Epidemic of 133 Mass Shootings in the US over the first 98 days of 2021

161 Killed and 524 Injured in just the MASS shootings so far this year (4 or more victims)

By Roger Straw, April 9, 2021

The Gun Violence Archive shows so much more than just numbers.  Each number represents the horrific story of friends’ and families’ nightmare.  See the numbers below, and so much more at Gun Violence Archive.

“Mass Shootings are, for the most part an American phenomenon. While they are generally grouped together as one type of incident they are several with the foundation definition being that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”

TOTAL OF 133 MASS SHOOTINGS JAN. 1 TO APR. 8, 161 KILLED, 524 INJURED
Source: Gun Violence Archive: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ where you can read details on each incident, and much more.
Incident Date State City Or County Address # Killed # Injured
8-Apr-21 Texas Bryan 350 Stone City Dr 1 5
7-Apr-21 South Carolina Rock Hill 4456 Marshall Rd 6 1
7-Apr-21 Wisconsin Milwaukee 2627 W Capitol Dr 2 2
6-Apr-21 District of Columbia Washington 4100 block of Ames St NE 0 4
6-Apr-21 Michigan Detroit 6100 block of Lodewyck St 1 3
5-Apr-21 Illinois Chicago 6800 block of S Justine Ave 0 7
5-Apr-21 Maryland Baltimore 300 block of N Eutaw St 0 5
4-Apr-21 Louisiana Monroe 207 Sterlington Rd 0 6
4-Apr-21 Alabama Birmingham 3969 14th Ave N 1 5
4-Apr-21 Texas Beaumont 6035 S M L King Jr Pkwy 0 4
3-Apr-21 North Carolina Wilmington 718 Kidder St 3 4
3-Apr-21 Alabama Tuscaloosa 2314 4th St 0 5
3-Apr-21 Texas Allen 1517 Pine Bluff Dr 6 0
3-Apr-21 Florida Quincy 2114 Pat Thomas Parkway 0 7
31-Mar-21 California Orange 202 West Lincoln Ave 4 2
31-Mar-21 District of Columbia Washington 1300 block of Congress St SE 2 3
28-Mar-21 Ohio Cleveland 5100 Pearl Rd 0 7
28-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago I-57 and W 127th St 0 4
28-Mar-21 Maryland Essex 1601 Middleborough Rd 5 1
28-Mar-21 Texas San Antonio 2011 Dollarhide Ave 0 4
27-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 500 block of N Leamington Ave 0 4
27-Mar-21 Mississippi Yazoo City Dr Martin Luther King Jr Dr and Shady Dr 0 6
27-Mar-21 Illinois River Grove Belmont Ave 1 3
26-Mar-21 Virginia Virginia Beach 2000 block of Atlantic Ave 0 9
26-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 2515 W 79th St 1 7
26-Mar-21 Virginia Norfolk 100 block of W Balview Ave 0 4
26-Mar-21 Tennessee Memphis 500 block of Arrington Ave 3 2
26-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 1080 N Delaware Ave 0 7
23-Mar-21 Alabama Aliceville 1st Ave SW and 15th St 2 2
22-Mar-21 Colorado Boulder 3600 Table Mesa Dr 10 1
22-Mar-21 Michigan Detroit 13300 block of Davidson St 1 3
20-Mar-21 Texas Houston 10266 North Fwy 0 5
20-Mar-21 Texas Dallas 10333 Technology Blvd 1 7
20-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 4234 Germantown Ave 1 5
18-Mar-21 Oregon Gresham 750 E Powell Blvd 0 4
18-Mar-21 Louisiana New Orleans 2400 Annette St 0 4
17-Mar-21 California Stockton Oro Ave and E Main St 0 5
16-Mar-21 Georgia Acworth 6468 Hwy 92 8 1
16-Mar-21 Arizona Phoenix 6215 W Elm St 4 1
15-Mar-21 Indiana Indianapolis 2300 block of N Harding St 1 4
14-Mar-21 Florida Tampa 10101 US-92 0 4
14-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 2600 block of E 77th St 0 4
14-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 6798 block of S South Chicago Ave 2 13
13-Mar-21 New York Brooklyn 917 Flushing Ave 0 5
13-Mar-21 Florida Orlando 200 block of Ring Rd 1 3
13-Mar-21 Indiana Indianapolis 300 block of N Randolph St 4 1
13-Mar-21 Virginia Richmond 5100 block of Richmond Henrico Tpke 2 4
12-Mar-21 North Carolina Greensboro 100 block of Huffman St 1 3
12-Mar-21 Texas Austin 7408 Cameron Rd 0 4
11-Mar-21 New Mexico Ohkay Owingeh (Chamita) 89 Rio Arriba Co Rd 56 1 3
11-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 1400 block of N 76th St 1 3
10-Mar-21 Texas Houston 6300 Ranchester Dr 3 1
8-Mar-21 Florida Clearwater US-19 ALT and Drew St 1 3
7-Mar-21 Mississippi Edwards 607 Wallace Dr 0 4
6-Mar-21 California Yuba City Countryside Dr and Littlejohn Dr 2 3
6-Mar-21 North Carolina Fayetteville 200 block of Shads Ford Blvd 1 4
5-Mar-21 California Compton 600 block of N Long Beach Blvd 1 4
4-Mar-21 District of Columbia Washington 3900 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SW 0 5
3-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Erie 2105 Buffalo Rd 2 3
28-Feb-21 Ohio Cincinnati 3600 block of Idlewild Ave 3 3
28-Feb-21 Indiana East Chicago 1205 W Chicago Ave 0 4
28-Feb-21 Delaware Dover 21 S Little Creek Rd 0 4
28-Feb-21 South Carolina Mccormick 437 Talbert Rd 0 4
28-Feb-21 Louisiana Shreveport 4914 Mansfield Rd 0 5
28-Feb-21 Texas Houston 13484 Northwest Fwy 0 4
27-Feb-21 Mississippi Columbus 1200 block of 7th St S 0 4
27-Feb-21 Mississippi Pattison Pattison-Tillman Rd 2 3
26-Feb-21 Texas Houston 8708 Beechnut St 1 5
26-Feb-21 Louisiana Baton Rouge 4700 block of Paige St 0 4
26-Feb-21 California San Diego 841 S 45th St 1 3
21-Feb-21 Missouri Kennett 1615 1st St 1 4
21-Feb-21 North Carolina Teachey Thomas Smith Ln and Bay Rd 0 4
20-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Norristown (East Norriton) 2912 Swede Rd 1 4
20-Feb-21 Colorado Grand Junction 1000 block of Teller Ave 1 3
20-Feb-21 Illinois Springfield 1100 block of S Grand Ave W 1 4
20-Feb-21 Louisiana Metairie 6719 Airline Dr 3 2
18-Feb-21 Louisiana Baton Rouge 2047 N Foster Dr 1 3
17-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 5597 Old York Rd 0 8
16-Feb-21 Florida Saint Petersburg 2968 Emerson Ave S 3 1
13-Feb-21 California San Francisco 3rd St and Quesada Ave 0 6
13-Feb-21 Indiana Indianapolis 3800 block of N Sherman Dr 0 4
13-Feb-21 California Oakland 1000 block of Washington St 0 6
13-Feb-21 North Carolina Cary 101 Reed St 1 3
11-Feb-21 Georgia Columbus 2001 South Lumpkin Rd 1 4
10-Feb-21 Georgia Atlanta 62 Harwell Rd NW 0 4
9-Feb-21 Texas Houston 945 W Little York Rd 0 4
9-Feb-21 Minnesota Buffalo 755 Crossroads Campus Dr 1 4
6-Feb-21 Tennessee Murfreesboro Ewing Blvd and West St 1 4
6-Feb-21 Louisiana Thibodaux 1100 block of Tiger Dr 0 4
6-Feb-21 Illinois Bloomingdale 250 W Schick Rd 1 5
6-Feb-21 Washington Tacoma 3634 E McKinley Ave 1 3
5-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Mohnton 360 E Wyomissing Ave 1 3
5-Feb-21 Mississippi Benoit 1017 Lake Bolivar Rd 3 1
4-Feb-21 North Carolina High Point 2912 W English Rd 2 3
3-Feb-21 Tennessee Memphis 800 block of Olympic St 1 3
3-Feb-21 Colorado Oak Creek 200 block of Wild Hogg Dr 3 2
2-Feb-21 Florida Fort Lauderdale (Sunrise) 10100 Reflections Blvd W 3 3
2-Feb-21 Oklahoma Muskogee 903 Indiana St 6 1
1-Feb-21 New York Rochester 400 block of Lyell Avenue 1 3
31-Jan-21 Illinois Chicago W Congress Pkwy and S Independence Blvd 0 4
30-Jan-21 New York Albany 200 block of Central Ave 1 4
29-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Mc Kees Rocks (Mckees Rocks) 824 Island Ave 2 3
28-Jan-21 Michigan Flint 1900 block of Tebo St 1 4
27-Jan-21 California Santa Ana 1614 S Standard Ave 0 4
25-Jan-21 District of Columbia Washington 1406 Good Hope Rd SE 1 4
24-Jan-21 Indiana Indianapolis 3540 Adams St 5 1
24-Jan-21 Nevada Las Vegas W Wilson Ave and H St 0 5
22-Jan-21 Kentucky Covington 217 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd 0 5
21-Jan-21 California Oakland 107th Ave and Apricot St 1 3
18-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Tobyhanna 960 PA-196 0 4
17-Jan-21 Arizona Phoenix 2340 W Northern Ave 0 5
17-Jan-21 Arizona Phoenix 2236 E University Dr 1 6
16-Jan-21 Illinois Kankakee 600 block of N Evergreen Ave 0 5
15-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 5000 block of N 10th St 0 4
11-Jan-21 Florida Miami 2491 NE 58th St 0 4
9-Jan-21 Illinois Evanston 100 Asbury Ave 6 2
9-Jan-21 Texas Houston 5828 Martin Luther King Blvd 1 3
7-Jan-21 District of Columbia Washington 1300 block of Columbia Rd NW 0 5
6-Jan-21 Texas Livingston 201 Maple Ln 2 2
6-Jan-21 Virginia Manassas 10010 Ellis Rd 3 3
4-Jan-21 Louisiana New Orleans 1600 block of N Galvez St 0 4
4-Jan-21 Florida Tampa 1225 S 78th St 0 5
4-Jan-21 Florida Fort Lauderdale (Lauderhill) 1828 NW 38th Ave 0 7
3-Jan-21 Oregon Gresham NE 181st Ave and NE San Rafael St 0 4
3-Jan-21 Texas Houston 2900 Travis St 1 4
3-Jan-21 Florida Miami 3632 NW 25th Ave 0 6
3-Jan-21 Louisiana Shreveport 6900 block of Jewella Ave 2 3
3-Jan-21 California Santa Barbara 1200 block of Liberty St 2 2
3-Jan-21 Florida Miami 10525 NW 24th Ave 0 8
1-Jan-21 Arkansas Fort Smith 3211 Towson Ave 0 7
1-Jan-21 Texas Amarillo 2650 Dumas Dr 1 3
1-Jan-21 Iowa Sioux City 2637 S Walker St 1 4
1-Jan-21 Illinois Galesburg 1000 block of Monroe St 0 4
133 MASS SHOOTINGS, TOTALS KILLED AND INJURED: 161 524