Over 14,000 people have died from gun violence so far this year, according to the White House press secretary.
The US has seen 201 mass shootings in the first 128 days of 2023, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed during a press briefing on Monday, citing “leading accounts.” Saturday’s massacre at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, which left eight people dead and seven injured, allegedly marked the 201st mass shooting of the year.
Jean-Pierre’s mass shooting statistics appear to be sourced from the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which a “minimum of four victims are shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”
Deaths by suicide comprise the majority – 57% – of the 14,836 gun deaths recorded by the Gun Violence Archive for 2023, with about 66 of the 115 gun deaths recorded per day being suicides. By the Archive’s definition, the number of mass shootings actually declined from 690 in 2021 to 647 last year.
The FBI typically defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are killed. By that definition, there have been about 21 this year. According to the FBI, the number of “active shooter” incidents in the US declined in 2022 compared to 2021, falling from 61 to 50. While the total number of people shot increased from 243 to 313, the number killed declined from 103 to 100.
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