As gun violence spiked within the year, the United States recorded a record high of 691 mass shootings in 2021, with at least four victims in each occurrence.
According to the most recent updates from Gun Violence Archive, an online archive that has been tracking gun violence incidents in the United States since 2013, practically all indexes of gun violence in 2021 broke records in the organization’s tracking history, according to Xinhua news agency.
As of December 31, 2021, 44,750 people had died as a consequence of gun violence, including 20,660 homicides and 24,090 suicides, with 1,533 of them being children and teenagers under the age of 17. The number of those injured reached a new high of 40,359, with 4,107 of them under the age of 17.
More than two-thirds of the country’s most populous cities experienced more homicides in 2021 than in 2020, according to a CNN study based on an analysis of over 40 major cities. At least nine large cities set new yearly homicide records this year.
According to data from the Philadelphia Police Department, the city reported 557 killings from January to December 2021, the highest total since 1960.
In 2021, the most violent year in a quarter-century, more than 800 people died as a result of gun violence in Chicago, a huge city infamous for gun violence. With roughly 400 gun-related deaths in 2021, Los Angeles established a 15-year high. In the United States, gun violence has been a persistent social issue with no apparent solution.
Between January and November 2021, 17 million weapons were sold, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the second-highest amount since 2000.
According to a nationwide firearms survey, roughly one-third of Americans, or 81.4 million people, own a gun, making them the most heavily armed population in the world.
