USA records over one daily mass shooting in 2019

Washington, Nov 29 (Prensa Latina) The United States recorded 382 mass shootings from the beginning of the year until today, a figure higher than the total of 2018 and equivalent to more than one daily case, according to data from the Archive of Armed Violence.

That nonprofit research group, which accounts for such crimes and other crimes and incidents related to firearms, defines mass shootings as events in which four or more people are killed or injured.

With the number of cases reported to date, in 2019 there is an average of 1.15 such attacks every day in the country, after a total of 337 events occurred in 2018, an average of 0.9.

Among all those attacks, 29 were mass murders -in which there was a balance of four or more fatalities- indicating that approximately every 12 days a crime of such dimensions takes place.

According to that source, there have been 13,734 deaths by firearms in the United States so far, -whether in mass shootings or other events- defensive use or involuntary incidents, which, together with 21,978 suicides, total 35 712 deaths caused by firearms.

These figures are even more alarming when it is observed that the deaths include 190 children from zero to 11 years and 698 adolescents from 12 to 17 years, in addition to the fact that in the first of these age groups there were 436 injured, and in the second two 95 thousand.

Given this panorama, calls of organizations and citizens in general to adopt measures that lead to greater control of weapons are increasing, in a territory where the right to carry these devices is recognized in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Extremely strong advocates of firearms, including conservative politicians and powerful lobby groups, oppose stricter regulations, arguing that armed violence is not motivated by the widespread presence of those artifacts.

But many voices believe that there is a direct link, because it is a country where it is estimated that the population of 327 million inhabitants has 46 percent of the nearly 857 million existing firearms in the orb in the hands of civilians. .

According to a report released in September by the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, a person in the United States is almost seven times more likely to die from a gunshot than someone in Canada; eight times more than in France; almost 20 times more than in Germany; and 40 times more than in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand.