Экспорт
In 2015, 330 mass shootings were recorded in the United States, killing 367 and injuring another 1,318, outpacing casualities in each of the preceding two years. Given the escalation of shooting deaths in 2015, US President Barak Obama announced in one of his first weekly addresses of 2016 new measures to increase background checks on gun buyers. The announcement does little, however, to immediately check ongoing gun-based violence: 138 mass shootings have occurred in the US since the start of the year, claiming at least 212 lives and wounding another 558 people. If this trend continues, 2016 may be even bloodier than 2015.
A mass shooting is an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed at the same general time and location, not including the assailant, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the organisation collecting data on gun violence in the US. As statistics show, such accidents take place almost daily across the US. In total, 1,002 mass shootings have occured during the last 1,262 days in which 1,139 people were killed and almost 4,000 people were injured. Of course, most of these incidents avoid the glare of the international media, with only the most deadly and hateful, including the recent shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, becoming well-documented in multiple news and social media outlets.
Mass shootings represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of gun-related deaths in the United States. Approximately 11,000 people were shot dead on average in America each year from 2005 to 2010, according to the UN Conference on Drugs and Crime, a 0.36 percent probability of being killed by a gun. In addition, about two-thirds of all homicides in the US are gun-related - the highest value among developed countries.