On Saturday, millions of Americans went to bed mourning the latest deadly mass shooting — this one in El Paso, Texas — and woke up the next day to news of a second, in Dayton, Ohio. The weekend carnage left at least 29 people dead, and plenty of indignation about Republican lawmakers who refuse to take up any meaningful gun reform, continuing to take money from pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association.
In truth, however, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the close timing of these two attacks: the United States has been averaging more than one mass shooting per day for at least the past three and a half years.
According to the definition established by the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks every mass shooting in the country, a mass shooting is any incident in which at least four people were shot. And so far in 2019, there have been 255 such incidents. Monday, August 5 is just the 217th day of the year.
View the complete August 5 article by Adam Peck on the ThinkProgress website here.