Update 4 Jul 2022: Mass shooting on US Independence Day
The event in the city of Highland Park, Illinois, was suddenly halted shortly after 10:00 local time (15:00 GMT), when several shots were heard. Twenty-four people were taken to hospital, officials say. A suspect has been named as Robert E Crimo III, 22. Police said he is considered armed and dangerous. Police said the suspect appeared to have targeted the parade's attendees at random with a high-powered rifle. The suspected gunman opened fire at the parade at around 10:15 local time, just a few minutes after it began.
The event was scheduled to include floats, marching bands, and community entertainment as part of the city's Independence Day celebrations. But what should have been one of the happiest days of the year quickly turned to panic, with pushchairs, purses and lawn chairs left discarded on the street as crowds fled from the scene. The suspect is believed to have fired at members of the public from the rooftop of a nearby shop, where police say they recovered "evidence of a firearm."
Five adults were killed at the scene, as well as a further victim who the local coroner said died in a nearby hospital. "On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we're instead mourning the tragic loss of life," said city mayor Nancy Rotering. The Fourth of July is a national holiday marking the date the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776.
6 dead, many injured after shootings in Philadelphia and Chattanooga
Philadelphia police investigators on June 5, at the scene of a fatal shooting on South Street in the city. (Michael Perez/AP)
On Saturday shortly before midnight, police officers on patrol in a popular nightlife area in Philadelphia heard gunfire and saw “several active shooters” firing into a crowd, Inspector D.F. Pace of the Philadelphia Police Department said at a news conference early Sunday. Three fatalities have been confirmed, two related to gunshot wounds and one related to injuries suffered when a person was struck by a vehicle. Several victims remain in critical condition after what police described as a chaotic and harrowing situation, as hundreds of people were out on a pleasant summer night.
About three hours later, at 2:42 a.m. Sunday, police in Chattanooga responded to reports of shots fired near a nightclub. They found 14 gunshot victims and three people who had been hit by vehicles that “were attempting to flee the scene,” Chattanooga Police Chief Celeste Murphy said in a briefing Sunday. Murphy said three people were killed, two who were shot and one who was struck by a vehicle. She said the investigation was ongoing. “Multiple shooters” were involved, she said, but police did not have anyone in custody.
'Several active shooters' in a popular Philadelphia area leave 3 people dead and 11 others wounded
Police said hundreds of people were in the South Street area just before gunfire broke out
Officers patrolling the South Street area heard gunfire and observed "several active shooters shooting into the crowd," said Philadelphia Police Inspector D.F. Pace. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference Sunday the shooting started at roughly 11:31 p.m. Saturday. The officers stationed on South Street "observed several civilians suffering from gunshot wounds, lying on the sidewalk and in the street." The officers then began rendering first aid to those who were injured, she added.
Outlaw said five guns were used by the shooters after a possible "physical altercation." One gunman was likely shot and wounded but escaped police, she said; another suspected gunman, who may have been involved in the physical altercation, is likely among the three people killed. The other two victims are believed to be innocent bystanders, Outlaw said.
Gunman kills four in Oklahoma medical centre
The assailant apparently died of a self-inflicted wound, said Tulsa deputy police chief Jonathan Brooks. PHOTO: TULSA POLICE DEPARTMENT/FACEBOOK
A man armed with a rifle and handgun killed four people inside a medical building in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday (June 1) before fatally shooting himself, police said, in the latest of a series of mass shootings to rattle the United States.
Police arrived at the St. Francis Hospital three minutes after receiving a call about the shooting on Wednesday afternoon and followed the sound of gunfire up to the Natalie Building’s second floor, Tulsa deputy police chief Jonathan Brooks told reporters. The officers made contact with the victims and the suspect five minutes later, Mr Brooks said.
Police responses have come under increased scrutiny after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in a Texas school classroom last week while officers waited outside for nearly an hour. Wednesday’s incident in Tulsa is the latest in a series of mass shootings that have shocked Americans and reignited debates about gun control. Two weeks before the Uvalde shooting, a white gunman killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighbourhood in Buffalo, New York.
Tulsa shooting is the nation's 233rd mass shooting in 2022, per Gun Violence Archive
There have so far been at least 233 mass shootings in 2022, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive — including today's shooting in Tulsa.
June 1 was the 152nd day of the year. This means there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in 2022.
CNN and the GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
Texas school shooting: Teenage gunman kills 19 children, 2 teachers in latest US mass murder
Emergency personnel gather near Robb Elementary School following a shooting, on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo: AP/Dario Lopez-Mills)
A teenage gunman murdered at least 19 children and two teachers after storming into a Texas elementary school on Tuesday (May 24), the latest bout of gun-fueled mass murder in the United States and the nation's worst school shooting in nearly a decade.
The carnage began with the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shooting his own grandmother, who survived, authorities said. He fled that scene and crashed his car near the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 130km west of San Antonio. There he launched a bloody rampage that ended when he was killed, apparently shot by police.
The motive was not immediately clear. Law enforcement officers saw the gunman, clad in body armour, emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and "engaged" the suspect, who nevertheless managed to charge into the school and open fire, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN.
A mass shooting 10 days earlier claimed 10 lives in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old who they said had traveled hundreds of miles to Buffalo and opened fire with an assault-style rifle at a grocery store.
18 children and a teacher killed in massacre at Texas elementary school
Law enforcement outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed at least 18 children and a teacher on May 24, 2022. (Christopher Lee/The New York Times)
A gunman killed at least 18 children and a teacher on Tuesday in a rural Texas elementary school, officials said, in the deadliest American elementary school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.
The slayings took place just before noon at Robb Elementary School, where second through fourth graders in Uvalde, a small city west of San Antonio, were preparing to start summer break this week. “He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly,” Governor Greg Abbott said in a news conference.
As terrified parents in Uvalde late Tuesday waited for word of their children’s safety and law enforcement officials raced to piece together how the massacre had transpired, the mass shooting was reopening national political debate over gun laws and the prevalence of weapons. Ten days earlier, a gunman fatally shot 10 people inside a Buffalo, New York, grocery store.
10 killed in 'racially motivated' shooting at US grocery store
Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. (Photo: Getty Images/AFP John Normile)
A heavily armed 18-year-old man shot 10 people dead on Saturday (May 14) at a Buffalo, New York grocery store in a "racially motivated" attack that he live-streamed on camera, authorities said.
The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo's police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said.
Among those killed inside the store was a retired police officer working as an armed security guard. The guard "engaged the suspect, fired multiple shots," but the gunman shot him, Gramaglia said. When police arrived, the shooter put the gun to his neck, but was talked down and surrendered, he added.
Gunman kills 10 in racially motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket
A man is detained following a mass shooting in the parking lot of TOPS supermarket, in a still image from a social media video in Buffalo, New York, U.S. May 14, 2022. (Reuters)
An 18-year-old white gunman shot 10 people to death and wounded three others at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, before surrendering after what authorities called an act of “racially motivated violent extremism.”
Authorities said the suspect, who was armed with an assault-style rifle and appeared to have acted alone, drove to Buffalo from his home in a New York county “hours away” to launch a Saturday afternoon attack that he broadcast on the internet.
Eleven of the 13 people struck by gunfire were Black, officials said. The two others were white. The racial breakdown of the dead was not made clear. The suspect, who was not immediately named by police, was heavily armed and dressed in tactical gear, including body armor, police said.
U.S. citizens voice dismay, urge action after Texas school shooting
On Tuesday, 19 kids and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, a small town in southern Texas, making the tragedy the deadliest shooting at a school in almost a decade.
The shooting once again demonstrates that gun violence, a deep-rooted problem in the United States, is worsening.
Many U.S. citizens have expressed shock and dismay at latest mass shootings, and called for action on gun control.
How has American support for gun reform changed in the pandemic?
An uptick in gun violence across the United States has reignited a push for more commonsense firearm reforms. But despite growing public safety concerns - and a mass shooting in a New York subway this month - Americans appear more divided than ever on gun control.
Pandemic instability spurred one in five American households to buy a gun between 2020 and 2022, according to a new study. The report also found that new gun owners are getting younger, more diverse and support less strict gun laws, like their older counterparts.
Still, more than 50 percent of Americans continue to favor gun reform. And the urgency to act is growing ahead of the summer months, which is when gun violence traditionally spikes in the U.S.
America's deadly fascination with guns
A family grieves outside of the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 PHOTO: AFP
The issue of gun violence might be a complex, emotional and deeply polarising issue in the United States, but at least one part of the problem is relatively straightforward: America has, by far, the most incidents of gun violence in the developed world because Americans have, by far, the most guns.
Exact numbers are difficult to pin down but by most reliable estimates, this arms race is not even close. A 2018 survey by a Swiss institute, Small Arms Survey, estimated that the US had more guns than people - 120.5 civilian firearms for every 100 residents. To put this in perspective, second on this list is war-torn Yemen with 52.8 guns for every 100 residents, a gun ownership rate less than half of the US rate.
What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.
More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record, according to recently published statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included a record number of gun murders, as well as a near-record number of gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths – a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population – remains below the levels of earlier years.
Here’s a closer look at gun deaths in the United States, based on a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the CDC, the FBI and other sources. You can also read key public opinion findings about U.S. gun violence and gun policy in our recent roundup.
How many people die from gun-related injuries in the U.S. each year? In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, those that involved law enforcement and those whose circumstances could not be determined. The total excludes deaths in which gunshot injuries played a contributing, but not principal, role. (CDC fatality statistics are based on information contained in official death certificates, which identify a single cause of death.)
related: Key facts about Americans and guns
GUN VIOLENCE – KEY FACTS
Amnesty International campaigns for effective gun violence prevention laws and interventions to stop gun violence
Gun violence is a contemporary global human rights issue. Gun-related violence threatens our most fundamental human right, the right to life.
Gun violence is a daily tragedy affecting the lives of individuals around the world. More than 500 people die every day because of violence committed with firearms. Anyone can be affected by firearm violence but in certain situations gun violence disproportionately impacts communities of colour, women and other marginalized groups in society. Sometimes, the mere presence of firearms can make people feel threatened and fearful for their lives with severe and long-term psychological effects on individuals and whole communities.
When people are afraid of gun violence, this can also have a negative impact on people’s right to education or health care when they are too afraid to attend schools or health facilities or if these services are not fully functioning due to firearm violence in their community. Easy access to firearms – whether legal or illegal – is one of the main drivers of gun violence.
Gun Violence in the US Far Exceeds Levels in Other Rich Nations
Mass shootings like the horrific attack that killed 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, or the murder of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York the week prior, are all too common in the US. There have been 214 mass shootings—defined by Gun Violence Archive as one in which at least 4 people were shot—in the US within the first 145 days of the year. These types of tragedies feel unique to America, where there are more civilian-owned guns than people.
In reality, gun violence is a huge issue in many other countries—just none that the US would consider a peer.
Gun deaths are high in places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia, where gang violence and drug trafficking are prevalent. Among developed economies, no others have nearly as many violent firearm deaths as the US.
Changes in Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates — United States, 2019–2020
Firearm homicides and suicides represent important public health concerns in the United States, with substantial inequities by race and ethnicity and poverty level.
In 2020, coincident with the COVID-19 pandemic, the firearm homicide rate increased nearly 35%, reaching its highest level since 1994, with disparities by race and ethnicity and poverty level widening. The firearm suicide rate, although higher than that for firearm homicide, remained nearly level overall but increased among some populations.
Communities can implement comprehensive violence prevention strategies to address physical, social, and structural conditions that contribute to violence and disparities.
US has far more gun crime than countries with similar gun ownership rates
Photos of the victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, are shown on a video display at T-Mobile Park Friday, May 27, 2022, during a moment of silence before a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the Houston Astros. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
In the wake of the most recent United States mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday (May 24), where 19 pupils and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle, a comparison considering how the US compares with other countries on children’s deaths caused by guns is compelling.
As the independent non-profit US organisation the Children’s Defense Fund has pointed out, gun violence is now the leading cause of US children’s deaths. It reported that there are nine fatal shootings of children per day, that’s one killing every two hours and thirty six minutes. A minority of these killings involve school or mass shootings, the majority are killings of individual children and link to routine crime and gang violence, and overwhelmingly result in the deaths of African-American and minority children.
The US stands as an extreme outlier among high income countries. The number of children killed by guns is 36.5 times higher in the US, compared to many other high income countries including Austria, Australia, Sweden, England and Wales, according to analysis recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine. In recent years international research has also proven conclusively that greater levels of gun ownership are closely associated with higher rates of gun violence. An audit by the Democrat-leaning policy and research organisation the Center for American Progress of all 50 US states found a close correlation between the states with the toughest gun laws and states with the lowest gun crime rates.
America's gun culture - in seven charts
A school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, involving young children has reignited the national US debate about access to firearms. What does the data tell us about gun culture and its impact?
Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life. There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 - that's higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.
In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010. But the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against sectors of the population fiercely protective of their constitutionally-enshrined right to bear arms.
Why is gun violence recurring issue in U.S.?
Two mass shootings in 10 days in the U.S. raise enormous concerns about rampant gun violence in this country. An African expert said negligence of the government due to the gun lobby is the main reason that caused the tragedy.
Two decades of deadly gun violence in US schools
Activists spread 7,000 pairs of shoes, representing the children killed by gun violence since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, on the lawn on the east side of the US Capitol in March 2018. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File/CHIP SOMODEVILLA)
At least 19 students and two teachers were shot dead on Tuesday (May 24) when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at their Texas elementary school, the latest in the United States' relentless cycle of school mass shootings.
Here are America's deadliest classroom gun massacres in the last two decades:
- COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL (1999) - Two teenagers from Columbine, Colorado, armed with an assortment of weapons and homemade bombs, went on a rampage at their local high school. Twelve students and a teacher were killed during the Apr 20 massacre. Another 24 people were wounded.
- VIRGINIA TECH (2007) - A South Korean student at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute opened fire on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus, killing 32 students and professors before committing suicide. Thirty-three people were wounded.
- SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (2012) - A 20-year-old man with a history of mental health issues killed his mother in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec 14 before blasting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty children, aged six and seven, were shot dead, as well as six adults. The shooter then committed suicide.
- MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL (2018) - On Feb 14, a 19-year-old former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who was expelled for disciplinary reasons returned to the Parkland, Florida, school and opened fire. He killed 14 students and three adult staff.
- SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL (2018) - Ten people, including eight students, were killed when a 17-year-old student armed with a shotgun and a revolver opened fire on his classmates in rural Santa Fe, Texas. Classes had just started on the morning of May 18 when the shooting began.
US firearm homicides hit highest rate in decades in 2020: CDC
The Statue of Liberty is seen from a field of vases full of white flowers, representing 1,050 lives lost to gun violence in 2020, in New York City, US [File: Brendan McDermid/Reuters]
Homicides linked to firearms hit the highest rate in decades in the United States in 2020, the country’s public health agency has found, as the coronavirus pandemic intensified long-standing socioeconomic inequalities.
In a report released on Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not make a causal link between COVID-19 and gun violence, but said the pandemic “might have exacerbated existing social and economic stressors”, especially among ethnic and racial communities. The firearm homicide rate nationwide increased by 34.6 percent from 2019 to 2020, the report found, from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 people. It said 79 percent of all homicides in the US in 2020 involved firearms, while 53 percent of all deaths by suicide were firearms-related.
“The firearm homicide rate in 2020 was the highest recorded since 1994. However, the increase in firearm homicides was not equally distributed. Young persons, males, and Black persons consistently have the highest firearm homicide rates, and these groups experienced the largest increases in 2020,” the report said.
Gun violence in the United States
Gun-related suicides and homicides in the United States
Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually. Guns were the leading cause of death for children in 2020. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available as of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reports 38,390 deaths by firearm, of which 24,432 were by suicide. The rate of firearm deaths per 100,000 people rose from 10.3 per 100,000 in 1999 to 12 per 100,000 in 2017, with 109 people dying per day or about 14,542 homicides in total, being 11.9 per 100,000 in 2018. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm. In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm.
About 1.4 million people have died from firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011. This number includes all deaths resulting from a firearm, including suicides, homicides, and accidents. Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, among those 22 nations studied, the U.S. had 82 percent of gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns, with guns being the leading cause of death for children. The ownership and regulation of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.
African American populations in the United States experience high amounts of firearms injury and homicide. Although mass shootings are covered extensively in the media, mass shootings in the United States account for only a small fraction of gun-related deaths. Regardless, mass shootings occur on a larger scale and much more frequently than in other developed countries. School shootings are described as a "uniquely American crisis", according to The Washington Post in 2018. Children at U.S. schools have active shooter drills. According to USA Today, in 2019 "about 95% of public schools now have students and teachers practice huddling in silence, hiding from an imaginary gunman."
Two mass shootings in 10 days in the U.S.
Law enforcement personnel walk outside Uvalde High School after shooting a was reported earlier in the day at Robb Elementary School, on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo: AP/The San Antonio Express/William Luther)
A teenage gunman murdered at least 19 children and two teachers after storming into a Texas elementary school on Tuesday (May 24), the latest bout of gun-fueled mass murder in the United States and the nation's worst school shooting in nearly a decade.
The carnage began with the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shooting his own grandmother, who survived, authorities said. He fled that scene and crashed his car near the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 130km west of San Antonio. There he launched a bloody rampage that ended when he was killed, apparently shot by police.
The motive was not immediately clear. Law enforcement officers saw the gunman, clad in body armour, emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and "engaged" the suspect, who nevertheless managed to charge into the school and open fire, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN.
A mass shooting 10 days earlier claimed 10 lives in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old who they said had traveled hundreds of miles to Buffalo and opened fire with an assault-style rifle at a grocery store.
