Bloody January in the US: twice as many mass shootings as five years ago

On January 14, a 41-year-old man turned himself in to police in Cleveland, Ohio, after murdering four people in a home.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
30 January 2023 Monday 05:46
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Bloody January in the US: twice as many mass shootings as five years ago

On January 14, a 41-year-old man turned himself in to police in Cleveland, Ohio, after murdering four people in a home. Three days later, all members of a family were murdered—including a 6-month-old baby, his 17-year-old mother, and a 72-year-old woman—in Goshen, California. Five days later, during the Chinese New Year celebration, another 72-year-old man killed 12 people in Monterrey Park, also in California. Not only has this been a black week in the US, but this month has already become - in the absence of counting the last five days - the start of the year with the most deaths and injuries in mass shootings in the last decade in the country.

This is demonstrated by data from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection and research group that monitors incidents involving firearms. This entity collects figures on a daily basis from more than 7,500 police, media, government and commercial sources.

With the figures closed until January 26, in the first four weeks of the year there have been 41 mass shootings, in which at least 74 people have died and 169 have been injured of varying degrees.

Never before had such high figures been produced in the first month of the year. Until before the pandemic and since 2014, each year there were an average of 22 mass shootings in the country, 90% less than this year. Until now, January 2019 was the bloodiest: 45 people died and 86 were injured in 27 massacres.

This 2023, however, the numbers of events, deaths and injuries have almost doubled. Already on the fourth day of the year, eight members of a family, five of them children, were found dead from gunshot wounds in a house in Cedar City, Utah. In those four days alone, 15 people died in different shootings throughout the country.

About a third of the fatalities have taken place in five shootings in California – causing 27 deaths in that state alone. Far away are, with eight deaths, North Carolina and Utah.

The debate over the control of firearms is an open wound with no possible cure in the US. In 2022 alone there were close to 59,000 victims —between deaths and injuries—, not counting the little more than 24,000 suicides registered by the Centers for the US Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This figure means that nationwide more than 160 people are injured or killed every day. Or what is the same, almost seven per hour or one every less than 10 minutes.

This scourge affects the entire society and in all its strata, but the ones that shake the public the most are those that involve minors. There, the figure is also alarming: only in the first 26 days of the year, 418 children under 17 years of age have been killed or injured. This figure represents 85% more than it was in 2019, although it has been increasing since then, year after year. In 2022, 389 injuries or deaths under 17 years of age were registered only in January, about 8% less than this year.

On the first day of this 2023, three children between the ages of 0 and 11 and six minors between the ages of 12 and 17 died in the US from firearms. Three days later, five children under 11 and eight under 17 were shot dead. In just four days, 31 minors lost their lives and 70 were wounded by firearms.

In June 2022, tens of thousands of citizens mobilized in more than 400 demonstrations across the United States to demand that lawmakers pass gun control laws to mitigate gun violence. They are concentrations and claims that occur periodically. They all end up in the same bag of political calculation pressured by the control of lobbies.