Last night, there was yet another tragic mass shooting in the US, when a 58-year-old man killed two civilians and injured nine in Lafayette, Louisiana, before killing himself.
The incident, which unfolded at a movie theater, recalls the recent shootings in Charlston and Aurora, wherein perpetrators fired shots towards a captive audience. As horrifying as these events might be, they’re just isolated incidents in a much bigger picture. In the United States from January 1 to July 23, 2013, there have been 204 mass shootings.
Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced website that monitors gun-related deaths, defines a mass shooting as an incident ”when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.” Not all of these mass shootings resulted in a death.
By that definition, forty of all fifty states have suffered some form of mass shooting since the beginning of the year.
To date, New York, California, and Texas have been home to the highest number of mass shootings this year. Louisiana, where last night’s incident took place, has been home to eight.