There’s still another week left of 2019 and analysts have dropped some serious baggage as the world prepares to bid adieu to one of the deadliest years on record.
According to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, there were more mass killings in 2019 than any other year dating back to 2006. Researchers delved back to the 1970s for comparison.
The data compiled shows that 2019 was fraught with 41 mass killings and, of those, 33 were mass shootings. In total, more than 210 people perished.
“The majority of the killings involved people who knew each other — family disputes, drug or gang violence or people with beefs that directed their anger at co-workers or relatives,” the report showed.
Guns were the weapon in all but eight of the mass killings studied with knives and axes next. The second-most killings in a year prior to 2019 was 38 in 2006.
James Densley, a criminologist and professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, told CNN that the AP/USA Today/Northeastern database confirms and mirrors what his own research into exclusively mass shootings has shown.
“What makes this even more exceptional is that mass killings are going up at a time when general homicides, overall homicides, are going down,” Densley said. “As a percentage of homicides, these mass killings are also accounting for more deaths. ”
He added, “This seems to be the age of mass shootings.”
The total number of deadly mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019 is an average of one every 15 days.
Sandy Hook Promise released “Sixteen Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings” here. Their “Back to School” PSA is also below.