U.S. faces second-worst year on record for mass shootings, with nearly 650 incidents – More than 42,000 people died from gun-related events in the U.S. in 2023, including 23,694 who died by suicide
By Molly Bohannon and Ana Faguy
25 December 2023
(Forbes) – The United States has faced 649 mass shootings so far this year, making it the second-worst year for shootings in the nine years since the Gun Violence Archive began recording data—after a set of brutal mass shootings in Maine, California, Texas and Tennessee took the lives of dozens of Americans.
Some 706 people have been killed in mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident with at least four injuries or deaths, not including the shooter.
This year has already outpaced the 646 mass shootings recorded in all of 2022 and the 610 reported in 2020, but is below 2021’s 689 mass shootings, a record since the Gun Violence Archive began tracking data in 2014.
As of Monday, 42,151 people have died from gun-related events in the U.S. this year, including 18,457 who died by homicide, murder or an unintentional shooting, plus another 23,694 who died by suicide. […]
Big number
More than 6,000. That’s how many children, ages zero to 11, and teenagers, ages 12 to 17, have been shot this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Key background
The deadliest mass shooting of the year happened in October, when 18 people were killed and 13 more were injured at two locations in Lewiston, Maine. While the shootings took place at two separate locations, the Gun Violence Archive has treated it as a single event. It outpaces a January shooting at Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, California, where 11 people died, and a May shooting at a shopping center outside Dallas where eight people were killed. Other larger mass shootings of the year include a January incident near San Francisco that killed seven people, a March shooting at a Nashville elementary school where six people died including three children and a Utah murder-suicide with seven deaths not including the shooter. [more]
U.S. Faces Second-Worst Year On Record For Mass Shootings—Nearly 650 Incidents
