Mass shootings and gun violence in the United States are increasing
The United States is the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than citizens
By Nikk Ogasa
On May 24, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were killed by a shooter. Just 10 days earlier, a white gunman was accused of a racially motivated shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 10 Black people dead. These tragic incidents are among the latest mass shootings to rattle the United States, the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than citizens.
Sadly, mass shootings — the definitions of which vary — are just a fraction of the story. In the United States, gun violence incidents are on the rise. In 2021, nearly 21,000 people were killed by firearms (not including suicides), according to the Gun Violence Archive, an online database of U.S. gun violence incidents. That’s a 33 percent increase from 2017, the year that firearm-related injuries usurped motor vehicle crashes as the most common cause of death among children and adolescents.