As the people of Las Vegas grapple this morning with the reality of being the latest American city to experience the horror of mass murder, it’s worth noting that America’s insane national obsession with possessing mass killing machines has now reached such an absurd level that even events like last night’s tragedy barely affect the statistics.
Consider the following remarkable data, courtesy of the good people at Everytown for Gun Safety:
- On an average day, 93 Americans are killed with guns
- Seven of the 93 of children or teens
- On average, there are nearly 12,000 gun homicides a year in the U.S.
- For every one person killed with guns, two more are injured
- 62% of firearm deaths are suicides
- In an average month, 50 women int he U.S. are shot by their intimate partners
- America’s gun homicide rate is more than 25 times the average for other developed countries
- Background checks have blocked nearly 3 million sales to prohibited people
- Black men are are 14 times more likely than white men to be shot and killed with guns
- The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of the woman being shot and killed by 500%
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