A mass shooting at an Allen, Texas outlet mall Saturday afternoon killed nine people including the suspected assailant and injured at least seven. So far in 2023, there have been at least 200 mass shootings — defined as incidents in which at least four people have been shot or killed — according to the Gun Violence Archive.
It is the second mass shooting in Texas in just over a week; police arrested 38-year-old Francisco Oropesa on Tuesday after he allegedly shot and killed five people including a 9-year-old child in his Cleveland, Texas neighborhood April 28. Despite repeated mass shootings, including one at Robb Elementary school in the city of Uvalde that killed 19 children and two adults a year ago, Texas has loosened its gun control policies in recent years.
The name of the shooter has not yet been released, nor have the names of those killed or injured, who reportedly range in age from 5 to 61, according to Reuters. A police officer already on the scene is reported to have killed the gunman.
Other nations, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, have taken immediate action to curb the proliferation of firearms, in particular highly lethal weapons like semiautomatic rifles, in the wake of mass shootings. In Serbia this week, after two consecutive mass shootings, populist President Aleksandar Vucic promised an almost total disarmament, though whether and how that will be accomplished remains to be seen.
The United States is the only wealthy country with such high rates of death and injury due to gun violence, as Vox’s Nicole Narea, Li Zhou, and Ian Millhiser previously wrote. An average of 120 people are killed by guns each day in America, including homicides and suicides, totaling about 43,375 such deaths each year.
Despite such horrific numbers, US politicians — in Texas, but also on the federal level — refuse to enact gun control measures that could appreciably reduce the number of mass shootings and gun deaths in this…
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