The shootings never stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, they just became less public, researchers say.
To some, it might have seemed as if mass shootings all but halted during the coronavirus pandemic, with a year passing between large-scale shootings in public places.
But the shootings never stopped. They just weren’t as public.
The Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one with four or more people injured or killed, not including the perpetrator, counted more than 600 such shootings in 2020, compared with 417 in 2019.
That carnage has continued into 2021, with at least 232 mass shootings as of May 26. (Including Wednesday’s shooting in San Jose, Calif, the archive, a nonprofit organization, has counted 15 mass murders, which it defines as four or more people killed, in 2021.)
The Violence Project follows the narrow definition of the Congressional Research Service, requiring the attacks to be in public and excluding domestic shootings and those “attributable to underlying criminal activity.” CNN has defined a mass shooting as one with four or more injuries or deaths. The Washington Post’s effort to track public mass shootings includes shootings with four or more people killed, but does not include robberies or domestic shootings in private homes.
Whatever the definition, it is a persistent American problem. Some mass shootings remain unforgettable to the broader public because of the number of people killed, the attackers’ motivations, the apparent randomness or other factors — cases that often become known by a single place name like Columbine, Newtown or Parkland. But there have been many other mass killings that never receive the same level of attention.
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Here is an incomplete list of shootings with multiple victims in 2021. It leaves out many more, but offers a small glimpse of the gun violence the country has already suffered this year.
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Credit: New York Times