College gun attack in Oregon is 994th US mass shooting in three years

Friday, 02 October 2015 3:38 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 02 October 2015 4:51 PM ]

Authorities move a shooting victim after a gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, on October 1, 2015. (AFP photo)

The United States has experienced more than one mass shooting a day this year and the fatal shootings at a community college in the state of Oregon were the latest of many gun-related deaths.

The deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College on Thursday is the 294th mass shooting event in 2015, according to statistics collected by the website Shootingtracker.com, which defines a mass shooting where 4 or more people are shot.

Nine people were killed and seven were wounded after a gunman burst into the college and opened fire.

The Oregon college shooting took place on the 273rd day of this year and marks the 294th mass shooting since January 1, equaling to just over one mass shooting a day.

Since the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, there have now been 994 such events resulting in roughly 1,236 deaths in the US.

By the FBI’s definition, there have been 45 “mass murders” this year. The FBI defines mass murder as four or more killed rather than four or more shot.

America’s gun violence goes deeper. The number of intentional homicides by guns was 11,208 in 2013, the last year for which US health authorities have statistics.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in the United States every year, a number that includes accidental discharge, murder and suicides, which are on the increase.

That means firearms kill more people in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in the entire year of 2014.

Moreover, over 73,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for gun-related injuries in 2010, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

This year is on course to break records. There have been a total of 39,449 gun-related incidents and 9,940 deaths so far in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Of those, 550 were children under 13.

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