WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Eleven people were killed and dozens were wounded in mass shootings that took place across the U.S. over the weekend, according to the latest numbers collected by the Gun Violence Archive. The grim statistics emerge as communities and policymakers grapple with an upswing in gun violence that continues to shake the country.
On the heels of two prominent massacres last month — one, at an upstate New York supermarket, and another, at a south Texas elementary school — 12 mass shootings were recorded between Friday and Sunday, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The archive, an online database that has operated for nearly a decade, tracks incidents of gun violence in the U.S. as they happen and shares reports that tally resulting deaths as well as injuries. The database also collects and publishes specific summaries of mass shootings, which it classifies as instances where at least four people are either killed or wounded, excluding any shooter.
Mass shootings were reported in numerous states this past weekend, including California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and Texas. One of the largest took place in Atlanta’s College Park neighborhood on Saturday night, when seven people were shot by an unnamed perpetrator during a house party, CBS affiliate WGCL reported. All seven victims were transported to a nearby hospital, with one suffering critical injuries, police said.
As the Gun Violence Archive noted on Twitter earlier Monday, this past weekend’s numbers pushed the nation’s combined total of gun-related deaths and injuries past 25,000 since the beginning of 2022. The archive has recorded 266 mass shootings just this year.
Last month’s mass shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and Tops Supermarket Buffalo revived national conversations about gun control and sparked renewed calls for leaders at both the state and federal levels to implement legislative reform.
On Sunday, a bipartisan group of 20 senators announced the outline of an agreement to reform national gun laws after weeks of negotiations on Capitol Hill. If passed, the plan includes some of the most significant changes to gun control legislation the U.S. has seen in almost 30 years.