After a week of a pair of mass shootings — an LGBTQ club in Colorado and the University of Virginia — the U.S. total has gone over 600 for the year at a record-setting pace, according to Gun Violence Archive data.
A mass shooting is defined as one where four or more people are injured or killer by firearms, which does not include the shooter being stopped, and by that definition not a single week has gone by in 2022 without at least four mass shootings having been reported in the data, The Washington Post reported.
Nearly 700 mass shootings occurred in 2021, up from 610 in 2020 and just 417 in 2019.
The 2020 year was during the COVID-19 pandemic, where most Democrat-run cities were locked down, too. But the death of George Floyd led to mass protests around America during a presidential election year and calls for defunding the police raised the temperature for anti-police protests.
The Gun Violence Archive started during former President Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2014 and notably mass shootings had not topped 400 reported since the data began being tracked by the organization.
In the reported 601 mass shootings through Saturday, there have been 621 fatalities and 2,524 injured.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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