The US is currently set to match or exceed the previous record for the most mass shootings in a year – set in 2021 with a total of 690 – data compiled by Gun Violence Archive (GVA) indicates.
According to GVA’s data, the US has witnessed an average of two mass shootings every day so far this year, for a running total of 419 incidents, Axios online news outlet reported Monday.
The report then noted that at this point in 2021, only 401 mass shootings had occurred, and that year over all had a daily average of 1.9 mass shootings.
This is while a whopping 25,000 people have been killed in gun violence incidents across the US so far this year, and there are still 153 more days left in 2023.
That amounts to an average of 118 deaths per day, and among those daily deaths were nearly one child between the ages of zero and 11 and over four teens between 12 to 17 years old, the GVA data shows.
Moreover, over 22,000 more individuals have also been wounded by gunshots so far this year, including more than 400 children and 2,400 teenagers.
Such statistics, however, do not reflect the complete scope of the gun violence epidemic in the US, the report adds, noting that they do not include the thousands of parents who lost their child, or the thousands of families forever diminish.
It further emphasized that the figures also cannot sufficiently highlight “the thousands of life-altering injures caused by gunshot wounds or the hundreds of thousands of dollars that gun violence victims rack up in hospital bills.”
GVA defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are shot and either killed or injured, not including the shooter.