Two incidents of gun violence over the weekend have pushed the nation into what the Washington Post calls a "grim US record": the highest number of mass shootings since 2006. The fatal shootings in Texas and Washington state on Sunday marked the 37th and 38th mass shootings in America in 2023, considered as such because at least four victims were killed (not counting the gunman), by the Post's metrics. It's the most in one year since at least 2006, which is as far as the database used by the newspaper stretches back.
In terms of deaths, Sunday's incidents brought the number of victim fatalities in mass shootings to 197. Because other groups define "mass shooting" differently, those numbers can come in even higher. Per ABC News, the Gun Violence Archive logs 629 mass shootings in 2023 so far, with the archive considering a mass shooting to be one in which four or more people are killed or shot, meaning injured people are also counted in the tally. For context, at this time last year, there'd been 617 mass shootings.
Mass killings are just "the tip of the gun-violence iceberg," however, the paper notes, citing Northeastern criminology professor James Alan Fox, who manages the mass killings database used by the Post, compiled by Northeastern, the AP, and USA Today. Per the CDC, there were upward of 48,000 gun-related deaths across America in 2022—or about 132 or so dying each day. More than half of those deaths were suicides. As for the dubious new mass-shooting record, Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, tells the Post it's a "tragic, shameful milestone that should—but probably will not—serve as a wake-up call" for lawmakers who've been stymieing gun control measures. (More mass shootings stories.)
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