On June 4, 2022, Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut and gun control advocate, tweeted: “Your morning reminder that in the 10 days since Uvalde, there have been 20 more mass shootings in the United States. In those 20 massacres, 91 were shot and injured and so far, 19 died.”
Since then, the numbers have risen to 36 mass shootings – defined as four or more persons other than the perpetrator shot in one incident at one location – 97 injuries, and 25 fatalities, all in the space of a mere two weeks.
These are the figures that stand as of this writing, on the morning of 8 June. By the time this column is published, it will be surprising if the numbers aren’t higher still. Mass shootings have become such an everyday part of American life that most of them don’t make national headlines.
