Shootings have continuously made headlines in just the first few months of the year.
As of May 1, at least 13,959 people have died from
gun violence in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive –
which is an average of roughly 115 deaths each day, reported ABC News.
Of those who died, 491 were teens and 85 were
children.
Deaths by suicide have made up the vast majority of
gun violence deaths this year. There's been an average of about 66 deaths by
suicide per day in 2023.
The majority of these deaths have occurred in Texas,
California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana.
The grim tally of gun violence deaths includes 460
people killed in officer-involved shootings.
There have also been 494 "unintentional"
shootings, the Gun Violence Archive shows.
There have been 184 mass shootings in 2023 so far,
which is defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which four or
more victims are shot or killed. These mass shootings have led to 248 deaths
and 744 injuries.
There have been at least 13 K-12 school shootings so
far this year, including a recent incident in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27
when three children and three staff members were shot and killed at the
Covenant School, a Christian school for students in preschool through sixth
grade.
In Michigan, three students were killed and five
others were injured when a gunman opened fire at two locations on Michigan State University's main campus in East Lansing
on Feb. 13, police said.
California saw three mass shootings in a matter of
days in January, with one shooting leaving at least 11 people killed and 10
others injured after a gunman opened fire at a dance studio near a Lunar New Year
celebration in Monterey Park, California.
The U.S. has surpassed 39,000 deaths from gun
violence per year since 2014, according to data from Gun Violence Archive.
Still, gun deaths are down from 2016, 2017 and 2018, when the total number of
deaths each year surpassed 50,000. There were 44,310 such deaths in 2022.
Last June President Joe Biden signed into law a gun safety package passed by
Congress. It was the first gun reform bill from Congress in decades.
But advocates for gun reform continue to push for
tougher measures. Florida lawmakers Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Rep. Maxwell
Frost spoke with "GMA3" this month to mark the
fifth anniversary of the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School and called on Congress to do more to curb gun violence.
"Five years later, we feel like we've made some
progress and then we were reminded that nothing has changed," Moskowitz
said.
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