The vast majority of Americans who die by firearm don’t make national and global headlines. They’re not killed by extremists with semi-automatics and slogans, but by suicides .

Active shooter incidents were responsible for 103 US firearm deaths in 2021.. This is a sickeningly high number, but it looks tiny when you consider the total number of US gun deaths in the same year was 48,830.

While the damage that can be done with a semi-automatic weapon is truly diabolical, rifles account for only 5 per cent of US firearm homicides (a figure that has not changed in two decades). Meanwhile, the portion attributable to handguns has been climbing steadily: it now stands at 91 per cent of all murders in which the type of gun was known.

The statistical relationship between gun availability and gun deaths is driven almost entirely by suicides. The more people who have access to guns, the more who use them to take their own lives. And since the vast majority of all gun deaths are suicides, this dynamic dominates the overall guns-deaths link.

The debate around US gun violence is dominated by mass shootings, but this is a crisis that runs much deeper.

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2021.21060604

Collapsing social trust is driving American gun violence
Mass shootings and high-powered rifles draw most attention, but the reality of most US firearm deaths lies elsewhere
JOHN BURN-MURDOCH 2023-05-12
https://www.ft.com/content/3d5a52a8-9180-4e56-92f9-16dfe6d1f397

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wb-4xjw_Ko