The US is setting a record rate for mass killings in 2023, repeating the horror about once a week so far this year.

The massacre claimed 88 lives in 17 mass killings over 111 days

based on Associated Press criteria for such events.

Each time, the killers wielded firearms. Only 2009 was marked by as many such tragedies in the same period.

Children at a Nashville elementary school shot on an ordinary Monday. Northern California farm workers shot at for workplace resentment. Dancers in a ballroom outside Los Angeles, slaughtered as they celebrated the Lunar New Year.

In the past week alone, four partygoers were killed and 32 injured in Dadeville,

ala,

when it rained bullets on one

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woe 16 celebration. And a man just released from prison shot and killed four people, including his parents, in Bowdoin, Maine, before opening fire on motorists driving on a busy highway.

No one should be shocked, said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was one of 17 people killed in a Parkland.

custard.,

high school in 2018. I visit my daughter in a cemetery. Outrage doesn’t describe how I feel.

The Parkland victims are among 2,842 people who have died in mass murders in the US since 2006, according to a database maintained by AP and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University. It counts homicides that resulted in four or more fatalities, not counting the perpetrator, by the same standard as the FBI, and tracks a number of variables for each.

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The bloodshed represents only a fraction of the deadly violence that occurs in the US each year. Yet mass killings are occurring at staggering frequency this year: once every 6.53 days on average, according to an analysis of AP/USA Today data.

The 2023 figures are even more striking when compared

of

the count for annual totals since data collection. The US recorded 30 or fewer mass murders in more than half of the years in its database, so it’s remarkable to be at 17 less than a third of the way through the process.

From coast to coast, violence is fueled by a variety of motives. Murder, suicides and domestic violence; gang retail; school shootings and workplace vendettas. All have taken the lives of four or more people at once since January 1.

Yet violence continues and barriers to change remain. The likelihood of Congress reinstating a ban on semi-automatic rifles seems remote, and the U.S. Supreme Court last year set new standards for reviewing the country’s gun laws, calling into question gun restrictions across the country.

The rate of mass shootings so far this year does not necessarily predict a new annual record. In 2009, the carnage eased, ending the year with a final tally of 32 mass murders and 172 fatalities. Those numbers are just above the average of 31.1 mass murders and 162 victims per year, according to an analysis of 2006 data.

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Horrific records have been set over the past decade. The data shows a high of 45 mass murders in 2019 and 230 people killed in such tragedies in 2017. That year, 60 people died when a gunman opened fire over an outdoor country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. The massacre continues to account for the most mass shooting fatalities in modern America.

Here’s the reality: If someone is determined to commit mass violence, they will, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Rockefeller Institute of Governments Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. And it’s our role as a society to try to put up obstacles and barriers to make that more difficult.

But there is little indication at the state or federal level, with a handful of exceptions, that many major policy changes are on the way.

Some states have tried to enforce more gun control within their own borders. Last week, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a new law requiring criminal background checks to purchase guns and shotguns, when the state previously required it only for people who purchased handguns. And on Wednesday a ban on dozens of types of semis

–

automatic rifles are approved by the Washington state legislature and go to the governor’s office.

Other states are experiencing another round of pressure. In conservative Tennessee, protesters came to the U.S. Capitol to demand more gun regulation after six people were killed at a Nashville private school last month.

At the federal level, President Biden signed a landmark law on gun violence last year, tightened background checks for the youngest gun buyers, stopped firearms from more domestic violence offenders and helped states use red flag laws that allow police to overrule courts. request that guns be taken from people who show signs of becoming violent.

Despite the blaring headlines, mass murders are statistically rare, committed by only a handful of people each year in a country of nearly 335 million people. And there’s no way to predict whether this year’s events will continue at this rate.

Sometimes mass killings happen back-to-back, like in January when deadly events occur

No

else and

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Outhern California happened just two days apart, while other months pass without bloodshed.

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We shouldn’t necessarily expect this one mass murder to continue every less than seven days, said Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who oversees the database. Hopefully not.

Still, pundits and advocates decry the proliferation of guns in the US in recent years, including record sales during the height of the pandemic.

We need to know that this is not the way to live, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. We don’t have to live this way. And we can’t live in a country with guns everywhere, anytime, anywhere.

The National Rifle Association did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.

Jaime Guttenberg would be 19 years old now. Her father now spends his days as a gun control activist.

America should not be surprised by where we are today, Guttenberg said. It’s all in the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. But we must do something immediately to fix it.