There have been more mass shootings than days in 2015
LatestDetails are still trickling in on the mass shooting situation currently unfolding in San Bernardino, California, and there’s still a lot we do not know.
We do, however, know that people were killed, and that the event marks the 351st mass shooting this year, according to TheWashington Post. That’s 351 mass shootings in 334 days.
The Post explains that this data is gathered by a Reddit community that keeps tabs on mass shooting events in the U.S. From the Post:
The reddit tracker defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people, including the gunman, are killed or injured by gunfire. The Mass Shooting Tracker is different from other shooting databases in that it uses a broader definition of mass shooting — the old FBI definition focused on four or more people killed as part of a single shooting.
And few states have been shooting-free. Vox used the Mass Shooting Tracker database to pull together a map of where mass shootings have occurred since the shooting in Sandy Hook in 2012:
Every mass shooting since Sandy Hook, mapped. https://t.co/IqqLwO7LC2 pic.twitter.com/AQMoVLpWh9
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 2, 2015
Last month, the New York Times published a partial list of the deadliest mass shootings since 2007 up to and including the attack on Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where 10 people were killed including the gunman. Today, at least 14 people were killed San Bernardino, police say. The death toll may still rise.
When President Barack Obama spoke after the incident at Umpqua, he spoke on the sad regularity of these tragedies:
As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America — next week, or a couple of months from now.
It’s hard not think about those words today.
Danielle Wiener-Bronner is a news reporter.