The Washington Post & The Gun Violence Archive & The New York Times – 2015-10-01 22:20:33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/01/2015-274-days-294-mass-shootings-hundreds-dead/
Obama Condemns ‘Routine’ of Mass Shootings,
Says US Has Become Numb
Shooting in Oregon:
So far in 2015, we’ve had 274 days and 294 mass shootings
Christopher Ingraham / The Washington Post
(October 1, 2015) — Today a shooter opened fire at a community college in Oregon. Early media reports indicate numerous fatalities and a number of additional people wounded. That brings the total of mass shootings this year — incidents where 4 or more people are killed or injured by gunfire — to 294.
There have been only 274 days this year.
The shootings are captured in this calendar, drawn from the the Mass Shooting Tracker. The tracker draws some criticism because its definition is broader than the FBI’s definition, which requires three or more people to be killed by gunfire. But the broader definition is nonetheless a useful one, because it captures many high-profile instances of violence — like the Lafayette theater shootings — that don’t meet the FBI’s criteria.
Charleston. Lafayette. Virginia. Now, Roseburg Oregon. But beneath the steady drumbeat of these high-profile cases lay the hundreds daily mass shootings that most of us never hear about. 11 wounded in a Georgia barroom. Six shot outside a Tulsa nightclub. A pregnant mom and grandmother killed, an infant wounded in Chicago.
We’ve gone no more than eight days without one of these incidents this year. On six days in September, there were 3 mass shootings or more. If the initial casualty figures in Oregon hold up, that would bring the total of deaths by mass shooting this year to 380 so far, with well over one thousand injured.
And of course, there’s the broader universe of nearly 10,000 people killed and 20,000 wounded in nearly 40,000 gun violence incidents so far this year.
These numbers only tell the smallest part of the story. And these very numbers will need to be updated again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.
Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.
Gun Violence Archive 2015 Toll of Gun Violence
Gun Violence Archive
• Total Number of Incidents 39,484
• Number of Deaths (1) 9,944
• Number of Injuries (1) 20,252
• Number of Children (age 0-11) Killed/Injured (1) 551
• Number of Teens (age 12-17) Killed/Injured (1) 1,963
• Mass Shooting (2) 264
• Officer Involved Shooting (2) 3,335
• Home Invasion (2) 1,696
• Defensive Use (2) 900
• Accidental Shooting (2) 1,389
Gun violence incidents collected/validated from 1200+ sources daily – source links on each incident report.
1: Actual number of deaths and injuries
2: Number of INCIDENTS reported and verified
Numbers on this table reflect a subset of all information
collected and will not add to 100% of incidents.
Data Validated: October 01, 2015
The Gun Violence Archive is an online archive of gun violence incidents collected from over 1,200 media, government and commercial sources daily in an effort to provide near-real time data about the results of gun violence.
Other Gun Incidents in the US on October 1, 2015:
17 Killed; 26 Wounded
# Killed (# Injured)
Texas Houston 6200 Block of Gulfton 1 (0)
Oregon Roseburg 1140 Umpqua College Rd 10 (7)
Wisconsin Milwaukee 712 W. Wisconsin Ave. 0 (1)
Florida Inglis 100 Block of Highway 40 W 3 (1)
New Jersey Camden Utica Avenue 0 (0)
Virginia Bedford Green Mountain Rd 1 (0)
Indiana Indianapolis 600 block N. LaSalle St. 0 (1)
Indiana Indianapolis 86th St. 0 (1)
Indiana Indianapolis 21st St. 0 (1)
Florida Miami NE 2nd Avenue 0 (1)
Florida Miami-dade 2300 block NW 81st Ter. 1 (0)
Florida Winter Park State Road 436 0 (2)
Ohio Perry 346 Pershing Ave. NW 0 (0)
Ohio Cleveland E. 145th St. 0 (1)
Ohio Lorain N/A 0 (0)
Virginia Richmond E. Brookland Park Blvd 0 (1)
Tennessee Chattanooga 3113 Dodds Ave. 0 (1)
Tennessee Jackson N/A 0 (1)
New York Horseheads 900 block W. Broad St. 0 ()0
California Sacramento 2900 block 39th St. 0 (1)
California Ontario 14700 block S. Archibald Ave. 0 (0)
California Oakland 3100 block of High Street 0 (1)
Arizona Tucson E. Broadway Boulevard 0 (1)
California Mariposa Highway 49 0 (2)
Ohio Columbus N/A 0 (2)
Mission Statement
Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is a not for profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States. GVA will collect and check for accuracy, comprehensive information about gun-related violence in the US and then post and disseminate it online, primarily if not exclusively on this website and summary ledgers at www.facebook.com/gunviolencearchive.
It is hoped that this information will inform and assist those engaged in discussions and activities concerning gun violence, including analysis of proposed regulations or legislation relating to gun safety usage.
GVA is not, by design an advocacy group. The mission of GVA is to document incidents of gun violence and gun crime to provide raw, verified data to those who need to use it in their research, advocacy or writing.
1718 M Street, N.W. PMB #126
Washington, DC 20036-4504
info@gunviolencearchive.org
Obama Condemns ‘Routine’ of Mass Shootings,
Says US Has Become Numb
Gardiner Harris and Michael D. Shear / The New York Times
(October 1, 2015) — President Obama’s rage about gun massacres, building for years, spilled out Thursday night as he acknowledged his own powerlessness to prevent another tragedy and pleaded with voters to force change themselves.
“So tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate,” the president said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named for a man severely wounded by an assassin’s bullet. “I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save these lives and let these people grow up.”
Mr. Obama admitted that he was unable to do anything to prevent such tragedies by himself. And, visibly shaken, he did little to try to hide the anger and frustration that have deepened as he returns again and again to the White House lectern in the wake of a deadly mass shooting.
Mr. Obama took a veiled swipe at the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby that has not only managed to forestall most federal legislative efforts to put limits on gun use or manufacture but has helped push through legislation in many state capitals making gun use and carrying far easier.
“And I would particularly ask America’s gun owners who are using those guns properly, safely to hunt for sport, for protecting their families, to think about whether your views are being properly represented by the organization that suggests it is speaking for you,” he said.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, declined to respond to Mr. Obama, saying that it is the organization’s policy “not to comment until all the facts are known.”
After previous shootings, the N.R.A. has been defiant in the face of calls for new gun laws. Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s executive vice president, declared after the school shootings in Newtown that, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
On Thursday night, Mr. Obama lashed out, saying that such massacres have been allowed to become routine and that people have “become numb to this.”
“And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common sense gun legislation,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue. ‘Fewer gun safety laws.’ ”
“Does anybody really believe that?” he asked, his voice rising.
Mr. Obama sought to answer that question years ago. After a massacre in 2012 of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Obama promised to use all the powers of his office to push for legislative changes that polls suggest were widely supported.
“Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?” Mr. Obama asked.
Less than a month later, Mr. Obama unveiled a proposal to overhaul the nation’s gun laws that would include universal background checks and a spate of other measures he deemed as “concrete steps” aimed at preventing more mass shootings.
“This is how we will be judged,” Mr. Obama said in January 2013.
The judgment came just a few months later, as lawmakers from both parties forcefully rejected the centerpiece of the president’s gun control agenda. At the time and also visibly upset, Mr. Obama stood in the Rose Garden to denounce the opponents of new gun measures even as he acknowledged the futility of his efforts.
He called it a “shameful day” in Washington and promised that, eventually, “I believe we’re going to be able to get this done.” But his eyes betrayed the truth: even he did not seem to believe that. In a Twitter message on Thursday, Dan Pfeiffer, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Obama until earlier this year, remembered that afternoon as “the most frustrated I ever saw President Obama in 8 years.”
With each massacre since, Mr. Obama has been forced to help the country grieve, as presidents are called upon to do in national tragedies. Thirteen dead at the Washington Navy Yard; three dead at Fort Hood; nine dead in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
And with each massacre, his sense of powerless anger and frustration have built.
But what was different this time was that the president did not announce any new initiative or effort to fix the problem. He has largely given up on that. Instead, he pointed out that there is “a gun for roughly every man woman and child in America. So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns will make us safer?”
States and countries that have gun limits have far fewer gun deaths than those that do not have such limits, he said. “So we know there are ways to prevent it,” he said.
He pointed out that the government responds to mine disasters by insisting on safer mines, to weather disasters by improving community safety, and to highway deaths by fixing roads and insisting that drivers wear seat belts.
But guns are seen as so different that Congress has forbidden the federal government from even collecting certain gun statistics, he said. He rejected the notion that the Constitution forbids even modest regulation of deadly weapons.
He also asked news organizations to tally up the number of Americans killed by terrorist attacks over the past 10 years and compare that to the numbers of those killed by domestic gun violence, and he implicitly compared the trillions of dollars spent and multiple agencies devoted to prevent the relatively few terrorist deaths with the minimal effort and money spent to prevent the far greater numbers of gun deaths.
And then he challenged voters to make gun safety a priority.
“If you think this is a problem then you should expect your elected officials to reflect your views,” he said.
Mr. Obama has long been seen as fairly unemotional, even distant. His speeches since being elected in 2008 have sometimes seemed like lectures from the constitutional law professor he once was. But he is also a father, one whose insistence on eating dinner with his daughters has meant that he rarely socializes in Washington and may have cost him politically.
Shootings, particularly at schools, seemed to bring together his roles as president and father in ways nothing else has. And that combination brings forth the kind of raw emotion he almost never betrays.
His eulogy in June to one of the victims of the massacre in Charleston, S.C., for instance, was widely considered one of his greatest addresses.
Thursday night, he had little of the soaring rhetoric and certainly none of the hope he expressed in Charleston. But he promised to continue hammering away at this issue for the rest of his presidency.
“Each time this happens, I’m going to bring this up,” he said. “Each time this happens, I’m going to say that we can actually do something about it.”
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