Introduction
In 2021, more Americans died from gun-related injuries than in any other year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) most recent data. That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths – a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population – remained below the levels of earlier decades.
How has the number of U.S. gun deaths changed over time?
The record 48,830 total gun deaths in 2021 reflect a 23% increase since 2019, before the onset of the
coronavirus pandemic. Gun murders, in particular, have climbed sharply during the pandemic, increasing 45% between 2019 and 2021, while the number of gun suicides rose 10% during that span.
Persons who committed public mass shootings in the U.S. over the last half-century were commonly troubled by personal trauma before their shooting incidents, nearly always in a state of crisis at the time, and, in most cases, engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire. Most were insiders of a targeted institution, such as an employee or student. Except for young school shooters who stole the guns from family members, most used legally obtained handguns in those shootings.
Generally speaking, mass shootings are an American phenomenon. The established foundation definition is that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, excluding any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident. While they are typically grouped together as one type of incident, they are actually several different types, including public shootings, bar/club incidents, family annihilations, drive-by shootings, workplace shootings, and those which defy description. Additionally, GVA provides the count of mass murder, which, like the FBI's definition, is defined as four or more victims killed—excluding the gunman. A subset of the mass shooting count is mass murder with a firearm.
Objective
We aimed to know if there are any racial influences on the USA shootings and or victims
Limitations
This study uses secondary data from data.gov which entails all shootings including murders, suicide, and mass shootings in 2021.
Previous works
In the context of the classification, as stated by
Binod Kumar in his work "Social Violence: The Role of Gun Culture" it would be appropriate to refer to Gandhi’s vision on the diffusion of societal functions and activities: “I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another”
(Attenborough 1982). The proposed classification of violence is not very far from Gandhi’s vision of social discourse and it does not imply rigid boundaries among the five forms resulting from human activity. Thus the forms of violence are not mutually exclusive. However, a delineation of the source of violence is an exercise of paramount importance for developing an effective set of solutions and social policies for its rectification.
Table 1: Source/Root and Impacts of Violence |
| Natural | Climate change, drought, famine, earthquake, etc. |
| Social | Racism, caste system, apartheid, gangs, fire arms, mental health, human trafficking, drugs and inequality |
| Political | Dictatorships, weak governments and hybrid (religious and political) states |
| Commercial | Environmentally questionable products, processes and waste disposals; excessive production of goods and services, and unsustainable consumption |
| Technological | Internal combustion engines (greenhouse gas emission and climate change) and digital revolution (a tool to propagate religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and bullying) |