On June 2, National Gun Violence Awareness Day, there were at least 35 shootings in the U.S., leaving 12 dead and 22 injured.
Wednesday marked the second annual day dedicated to remembering the people killed by gun violence across the country. The yearly show of solidarity was inspired by the 2013 shooting of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teen who was gunned down one week after performing for President Obama’s second inauguration. But as people dressed in orange to show their support for victims like Pendleton, others were shot down in every region of the country.
Although National Gun Violence Awareness Day has only been celebrated twice, participants are part of a larger movement of people that’s been fighting for stricter gun control to prevent shootings that claim the lives of approximately 90 people every day. According to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks intentional and accidental shootings in real time, there have been 21,841 gun incidents so far this year. More than 5,500 people have been killed.
Calls for expanded background checks and closing of gun purchasing loopholes have echoed nationwide, largely in response to the hundreds of mass shootings that occur every year, including the 2012 massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. GVA reported 330 mass shootings last year. Mass Shooting Tracker, another database that defines a mass shooting as “four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree” recorded 371 last year.
Despite overwhelming support for gun control in the form of expanded background checks, Congress has dragged its feet on reform. Other than renewing the Undetectable Firearms Act that bans firearms that aren’t picked up by a metal detector, Congress has failed to pass a gun control bill since the Newtown shooting.
“But we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency,” the president said in January. “It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close. And as I’ve said before, somehow we’ve become numb to it and we start thinking that this is normal.”
Due to inaction in Congress, Obama announced a series of executive actions early this year that require all gun sellers to be licensed and forces them to carry out background checks, among other measures.