Violence of all kinds has surged since 2020: mass shootings, homicides, hate crimes, and more. During the rise of COVID-19, violence leaped, with more than 24,000 lives taken due to violent acts.
Brutality is an ever-rising issue, but instead of confronting the matter head-on, America turns away. Shifting the blame, politicizing misfortunes, and overall failing to formulate meaningful change. We have long-since learned that violence is often answered with further violence, and those who can’t handle it turn to ignoring it outright. To properly understand the weight of this issue, we must first find where it started.
Many believe that this spike in violence was partly due to the murder of George Floyd back in May of 2020. This murder, because it was at the fault of a Minneapolis police officer, and because the victim was African-American, angered a large portion of America. As a result, there was a police “pull-back,” which then allowed time and space for the spike in violence. Floyd’s murder was one of many instances where police officers’ morals and core values were in question. This furthered the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as well as sparked the All Cops Are Bad (ACAB) movement, furthering the divide between society and those who are supposed to protect it.
According to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the highest number of gun-related homicides since 1994 happened in 2021, the number being well over 20,000. On top of this, there were 26,328 gun-related suicides during that same year.
This isn’t to say these numbers haven’t dropped, they simply haven’t dropped enough. Information from the FBI data explorer shows fluctuations in the number of cases; however, they remain progressively higher than in pre-pandemic reports.
A ‘mass shooting’ is defined as any incident in which four or more people are shot, whether injured or killed. Based on statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 3,163 mass shootings since 2020, including the 60 that have already happened this year. At least 160 of these shootings have involved a school. These tragedies occur statewide—at concerts, during public events, and even in elementary schools. They involve innocent lives, yet the responses are “thoughts and prayers” from political leaders and protests against stricter gun laws.
We hear about how ‘mentally ill’ the people causing these crimes are and how much ‘help’ they should have received, but there is still a blatant lack of regard in terms of creating more safe spaces to discuss and get help for those very issues. Everyone in the world can offer condolences and words of assistance, but if they remain simply spoken words, then we aren’t making a difference.
To break the cycle, we must first recognize this crisis for what it truly is: completely preventable and in need of immediate action. We must demand significant policy changes, do better to hold leaders accountable, and push to change the status quo.
