In US, 204 Mass Shootings in 204 Days

Crowd-sourced project tracks incidents in which at least 4 people were shot
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 24, 2015 5:41 PM CDT
In US, 204 Mass Shootings in 204 Days
A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers at a makeshift memorial for store co-owner Jillian Johnson at Red Arrow Workshop in River Ranch in Lafayette, La. Sje was killed in the theater shooting.   (Paul Kieu/The Daily Advertiser via AP)

It's the worst kind of synchronicity: A website that tracks mass shootings in the US had logged 203 through Wednesday. It hasn't caught up with last night's rampage in a Louisiana theater, but when it does, that will be No. 204—and yesterday was the 204th day of the year, notes the Washington Post. The Mass Shooting Tracker is a crowd-sourced tool from an anti-gun forum at Reddit called Guns Are Cool, and it defines "mass shooting" as incident in which at least four people were shot. Not all of the incidents resulted in deaths.

A post at Quartz digs in a little deeper to the numbers and finds that 40 of 50 states have had at least one such mass shooting this year, with New York (16), California (14), Florida (14), Texas (12), and Georgia (12) at the top of the list. In its coverage, the Post quotes a barb from the Economist, written after the Charleston church massacre, that has been in wide circulation of late: "Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard [mass shootings] the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution." (More mass shootings stories.)

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