2022 was another banner year
A look back at the annual body count:
From the 19 children and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, to the five people murdered at Club Q in Colorado Springs, countless lives have been impacted by mass shootings in the United States this year.
There is no official FBI definition of a mass shooting, so definitions vary from group to group. This means that there is no official number of mass shootings that occurred in 2022.
However, the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as a shooting in which there are four or more people shot or killed — not including the shooter — recorded 641 mass shootings in 2022 as of Dec. 28.
The online archive reported 690 mass shootings in 2021, the highest year on record. This means that 2022, with at least 641 mass shootings, had the second highest number of mass shootings in a year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Some other lists put it at the highest year on record. Either way, it’s a disgrace.
This year book-ended the horrific mass killing of first graders in Newtown Connecticut 10 years ago with the equally horrific mass killing of fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas, proving that we haven’t managed to do much of anything to stop these horrific mass shootings in the intervening years. If Uvalde is any example, the police training has actually regressed in that time.
This is a national shame. And while it was good that they managed to pass some minor gun safety regulations this year, it really wasn’t much. At this point it’s very hard to see what it would take to change this.