So 2015 is almost over. Like 334 days over. But guess what? There have been 351 mass shootings this year! That is more shooting than days that have passed which mean that it is an average of more than one mass shooting per day this year.
Yesterdays mass shooting in San Bernardino isn't the only one that happened on December 2nd. That morning, one person was killed and several injured in a mass shooting in Savannah, Georgia. Someone was also shot and killed outside of a health clinic in Houston, Texas. And just 10 miles from the San Bernardino health clinic in which dozens were shot, there were reports of shots fired at a near Target store.
The Washington Post has compiled data of every mass shooting to date since January 1st of this year, including any event in which 4 or more people are killed or injured by gunfire as a mass shooting. As the chart below shows, there have been as many as 5 mass shootings in a single day! HOLY COW! 2015 has already had more mass shooting than 2014 and is on track to outpace 2013, in which 363 mass shootings were carried out. That its one record that I would not like to beat!
At this rate, mass shootings will continue to be a daily reality in America without some kind of gun control legislation. America's obsession with guns reached an all-time high this Black Friday, with the FBI performing a record setting 185,345 background checks for new gun purchases. And as gun purchases continue to rise, gun violence has become an epidemic that, as Nicholas Kristof reported, has claimed more lives since 1968 than every American war in history. To demonstrate gun deaths by year, Mother Jones made a graphic showing that guns kill an average of 33,000 Americans each year, while injuring another 80,000.
This statistic always punches me right in the gut. https://t.co/CJ9WPLonKX pic.twitter.com/GLEZ4qP12R
— James West (@jameswest2010) December 2, 2015
Congress hasn't attempted serious gun control legislation since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 but a number of reforms have been proposed to prevent mass shootings, including expanded background checks and reinstating the assault weapons ban, but the National Rifle Association (NRA) has successfully mobilized enough resistance to defeat even the most mild of proposals.
What do you think about guns? Should the normal civilian have them? Should they only be for hunting? What do we do?
xoxo, Kaila
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