Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
This is the fourth mass shooting in California this month. Image Source: IANS
A 2018 report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey discovered that US gun owners had 393.3 million firearms, which is more than the nation's current population of 330 million.
On January 28, 2023, early in the morning, a shooting in the California area left at least three individuals dead and four more injured. A posh Los Angeles neighbourhood called Beverly Crest was the scene of the incident, according to Sgt. Frank Preciado of the Los Angeles Police Department. Of the seven people who were shot, four were standing outside. The three who were killed were in a vehicle. Their identities were kept a secret. The injured were transferred to a hospital, where they are currently in a critical condition. This is the fourth mass shooting in California this month. The shooting occurred just a few days after a man opened fire at a dance club in California during the Lunar New Year celebrations. In the Sunday shooting, there were 11 fatalities and 9 injuries.
The overall number of firearm-related deaths in the US increased to 45,222 in 2020, the highest amount the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ever recorded since it began keeping track of such deaths in 1968. This corresponds to an average of 124 people each day dying from gun violence. Around 54 percent of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (24,292), while 43 percent were murders (19,384). The figure represents a 34 percent increase from 2019, and a 75 percent increase over the course of the previous decade. In 2017, some 39,773 died from gunshot injuries, an average of nearly 109 people each day. That year also saw country's worst mass shooting in a decade when 50 people were killed and over 500 wounded in Las Vegas.
Source: Gun Violence Archive
More than 600 mass shootings were reported in the United States in 2022 alone, according to data from the Washington based Gun Violence Archive, which is more than twice as many as the 336 mass shootings that were recorded four years earlier. A mass shooting is any incident in which four or more persons are shot or killed, excluding the shooter.
Source: Small Arms Survey
A 2018 report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey discovered that US gun owners had 393.3 million firearms, which is more than the nation's current population of 330 million. United States also has the highest firearms per 100 residents’ ratio. And the figure is increasing. According to GVA, 7.5 million US adults - just under 3 percent of the population - became first new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021. About half of new gun owners in that time period were women while 40 percent where blacks.
Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, ABC News
The deadliest shooting in California history was in 1984 when 21 people were killed at a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro. Reports suggest that California is the state that has witnessed least number of mass shootings due to stringent laws regarding guns and their use. But this month, those laws failed to prevent mass shootings in California.
