Iran Press/America: The incidents, which are coming all over the US, are being tracked by the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as when four or more people are shot.
The most recent mass shooting to end with multiple deaths occurred on Thursday at an Indianapolis FedEx facility, where eight people were killed and several others injured.
US President Biden has called on Congress to ban high-capacity magazines and assault weapons in the wake of the mass shootings, as well as issuing multiple executive orders on the issue. Democrats and Republicans have been at a gridlock over gun legislation with Democrats wanting to crack down on assault weapons and Republicans refusing to move on measures they see as restricting Second Amendment rights.
"Gun violence in this country is an epidemic. And it’s an international embarrassment,” Biden said when unveiling his orders.
They include measures telling the Justice Department to propose a system so states can implement “red flag” laws, proposing rules to make guns that a person assembles themselves at home subject to background checks, and putting pistols that have a stabilizer brace on the National Firearms Act.
The Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one with four or more people injured or killed, not including the perpetrator, counted more than 600 such shootings in 2020, compared with 417 in 2019.
That carnage has continued into 2021, with 147 mass shootings as of April 16. (The archive, a nonprofit organization, has counted 11 mass murders, which it defines as four or more people killed, in 2021.)
There is little consensus on the definition of a mass shooting, complicating the efforts of nonprofits and news organizations to document the scope of the problem.
The Violence Project follows the narrow definition of the Congressional Research Service, requiring the attacks to be in public and excluding domestic shootings and those “attributable to underlying criminal activity.” CNN has defined a mass shooting as one with four or more injuries or deaths. The Washington Post’s effort to track public mass shootings includes shootings with four or more people killed but does not include robberies or domestic shootings in private homes.
Whatever the definition, it is a persistent American problem.
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