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gun violence archive
Minneapolis Mass Shooting Exposes Trump-GOP Lies on Crime and Gun Violence, Critics Say
"Trump will send the military into DC to pick up litter and arrest homeless people, but won't do a damn thing to end the gun violence epidemic killing our kids," said one healthcare advocate.
Aug 27, 2025
Another horrific mass shooting that left multiple children dead and injured has once again ignited a wave of fury at Republican lawmakers who refuse to take action to stop gun violence.
Two children—ages 8 and 10—were killed when a shooter fired through the windows of a church at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. Another 17 people, including 14 more children, were also injured in the attack before the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Minneapolis police say the shooter carried out the attack, which is now being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism, using three weapons: a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, not even eight months into 2025, there have already been 286 mass shootings—defined as cases in which four or more people are shot or killed—in the United States just this year, averaging more than one per day.
Gun violence is the number-one killer of children in the US, causing more deaths each year than car accidents, poisonings, and cancer. The victims of the shooting in Minneapolis join the more than 800 children killed and more than 2,200 injured by firearms this year.
Like dozens of mass shootings before it, Wednesday's deadly attack has stoked calls in Minnesota and around the country from Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates for stricter gun laws, which have been repeatedly shot down by Republicans in Congress.
"We need better laws on the books nationally," said Minnesota's Democratic senator, Amy Klobuchar. "When you have so much access to guns right now and so many guns out there on the streets, you're going to continue to see these kinds of mass shootings."
"Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. "These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church."
"They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance," Frey said. "These are the sort of basic assurances that every family should have every step of the day, regardless of where they are in our country."
Congress has not passed a significant piece of gun legislation since 2022, when it passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
That law, which was supported by just 15 Republicans, introduced some modest reforms—including extended background checks for firearm purchasers under 21, funding for state red flag laws, and the closure of gun purchasing loopholes.
However, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) only agreed to negotiate the bill if Democrats abandoned more ambitious reforms, such as bans on high-capacity magazines and universal background checks.
Since its passage, even this watered-down piece of legislation has been fought aggressively by Republican lawmakers backed by the gun industry's lobbying arm, the National Rifle Association, who have attempted to have it repealed.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to present an action plan to reverse any law that the Department of Justice determines has "impinged on the Second Amendment rights of our citizens."
Through executive orders, Trump has rolled back efforts under the Biden administration to regulate ghost guns and enhance background checks.
The administration has also choked off more than $800 million in grants to local gun violence prevention groups and pushed for "concealed carry reciprocity" legislation, which would require all states to honor concealed carry permits issued by other states.
Instead of stricter gun control measures, Trump has personally advocated for schools to arm teachers and focus on improving mental healthcare—even as he's rolled back rules ensuring Americans have access to that care.
"Until we have more elected officials willing to place gun safety over allegiance to the gun lobby, more and more families will face unbearable suffering from random acts of violence," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) on Wednesday. "Congress could—and should—pass stricter gun safety laws, but continues to cave to the gun lobby."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) added: "The United States continues to be the only country where school shootings are a regular occurrence. We must stop this epidemic of gun violence and finally put the lives of our kids first."
Other advocates noted the contrast between Trump's response to the imaginary "crime wave" in Washington, DC, where he has initiated a militarized takeover, and his lack of interest in fighting America's endless wave of gun violence.
"Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in the US," said Melanie D'Arrigo, the executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. "Trump will send the military into DC to pick up litter and arrest homeless people, but won't do a damn thing to end the gun violence epidemic killing our kids."
Charles Idelson, a former communications director for National Nurses United, said: "If Trump wants to pretend he is 'fighting crimes,' stop protecting the pro-gun violence cabal."
Update: This report, which originally referred to the shooter as a "gunman" has been corrected to accurately reflect new information about the gender identity of the shooter, who has been identified as Robin Westman, a transgender woman.
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Gun Deaths Among US Children Rose 87% in Last Decade, Study Shows
Children in the U.S. are "paying the price for inaction on gun violence with our lives," said Students Demand Action.
Oct 05, 2023
As Republican lawmakers and the gun lobby have fought tooth and nail against proposals to reduce access to firearms in the U.S. and ensure they are kept out of the hands of children over the last decade, the number of child deaths from gun violence has almost doubled, rising 87% between 2011-21.
Two doctors in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital were joined by the teenage daughter of one of the physicians in analyzing nonfatal and fatal injuries over a decade and published the study Thursday in the journal Pediatrics, run by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The researchers found that nonfatal injuries from all causes, such as car crashes and household accidents, dropped by more than half between 2011-21, plummeting from 11,592 to 5,359 per 100,000 children. The rate of fatal injuries went up from 14.07 to 17.3 per 100,000.
"Firearms and drug poisonings are both exceptions to this, in that both the nonfatal injuries and the fatal injuries increased," Cordelia Mannix, a high school student in Concord, Massachusetts and the daughter of lead study author Dr. Rebekah Mannix, told The New York Times.
Just over 1,300 children under the age of 18 were killed by firearms in 2011, compared with 2,590 children in 2021.
The study comes a year after data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that guns had overtaken car accidents as the leading killer of U.S. children.
In other wealthy countries, noted the Times on Thursday, gun violence is not even within the top three causes of death among children.
The researchers wrote regarding both firearm injuries and deaths and those resulting from drug poisonings that "public health legislative support has lagged in these critical injury mechanisms."
"This is especially concerning given the high case fatality rate of these injury mechanisms in children," they wrote.
Dr. Mannix attributed reduced injuries and deaths from other causes to "public health interventions," telling ABC News that the U.S. in recent decades has been "improving motor vehicle safety, improving helmet technology, [and] childproofing."
The firearm industry in the last decade has lobbied against red flag laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people at risk of harming themselves or others, universal background checks, and bans on the types of guns that have been increasingly used in mass shootings, such as AR-15s.
Mark Oliva, a spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Times that the group also opposes laws requiring manufacturers to make guns childproof and that "the group is not currently doing research on making firearms safer," despite rising deaths among children.
Meanwhile, said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Republican lawmakers "somehow maintain that their gun culture makes people safer."
Earlier this week, data from the Gun Violence Archive showed that more than 1,300 children and teenagers have been killed by a firearm so far this year, while the CDC found in April that gun deaths among children rose 50% in just two years, between 2019-21.
Students Demand Action, a youth-led gun control advocacy group, said Tuesday that U.S. children are "paying the price for inaction on gun violence with our lives."
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'Broken Country': 2-Year-Old FBI Training Video of How to Survive US Mass Shooting Goes Viral
The video's recirculation comes days after the second deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year.
May 09, 2023
As the U.S. remains on track for a record number of mass killings in 2023, an FBI training video instructing people on how to survive a shooting has gone viral this week.
The video, which the FBI first shared on YouTube in September 2020, is making the rounds on Twitter and TikTok, with posters expressing a mix of incredulity and outrage at the state of U.S. gun control.
"TW: Violence. If you ever need to travel to Purgeland, United [States] of Idiocracy, follow [these] instructions," Rafael Contreras Rodríguez tweeted from Auckland, New Zealand Monday.
\u201cTW: Violence\n\nIf you ever need to travel to Purgeland, United Sates of Idiocracy, follow this instructions.\u201d— Rafael Contreras Rodr\u00edguez (@Rafael Contreras Rodr\u00edguez) 1683501234
The video's message to anyone caught up in a mass shooting is there are three options: "Run, hide, or fight."
"In this FBI training video, customers at a bar are caught in an active shooter event," the FBI's description reads. "By employing the run, hide, and fight tactics, as well as knowing the basics of rendering first aid to others, they are prepared, empowered, and able to survive the attack."
The video includes tips such as, "Running makes you harder to hit... and improves your chances of survival," and, "If we control the weapon, we control the shooter."
"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years."
Ultimately, the FBI advises people to run for an exit if possible, hide if there is no safe escape route, and fight only as a last resort.
For those who do choose to fight, the FBI reminds viewers: "You're fighting for your life. Don't fight fair!"
While the video is more than two years old, it is sparking a new wave of reactions days after the second deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year. On Saturday, Mauricio Garcia opened fire with an AR-15-style gun on the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas, killing eight, as CNN reported.
"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years," Ephraim Gopin tweeted Tuesday. "I am without words. The craziest thing? It was made by THE FBI! The fact that they felt the need to get this out to the public is insane. Sad."
User Kat Abu shared the video under the two words, "broken country."
"I am from Australia—can someone please explain if this is parody or not?" Stu Mac responded.
"It's not," Abu tweeted back.
The video's recirculation comes as the U.S. is on track to reach a record number of mass killings in 2023. A mass killing is defined as an incident in which four or more people—excluding the perpetrator—are killed. According to Gun Violence Archive figures, the U.S. has seen 21 mass killings so far this year, a rate of more than one per week. If this rate continues,The Guardian reported, the country could see 60 by the end of the year.
Another database of mass killings from USA TODAY, Northeastern University, and The Associated Press puts the number of mass killings for 2023 at 22, the most so early in the year since the database was launched in 2006.
A mass killing does not have to be carried out by guns, but this year, firearms were "almost exclusively" to blame, the AP said.
This year has also seen a high number of public mass shootings, such as the bloodbath at the Texas mall. In a typical year, there will be six such massacres, but the Allen, Texas, shooting marked the sixth so far for 2023, Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox told USA TODAY.
"Those are the kinds of events that make headlines, scare people, and make them look around when they go into a supermarket or retail store," Fox said.
There have also been 208 mass shootings—an incident in which four or more people excluding the perpetrator are killed or injured by firearms—this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This is the highest for this point in the year since 2016.
California and Texas have witnessed the largest number of these shootings at 17 each. In Texas, which has the most registered guns of any state in the nation, Democratic politicians expressed frustration at gun laws that have only gotten laxer in the state.
"I'm just so tired and hurt and devastated by the continuing mass shootings in this state and in this nation… Eight innocent people are dead—dead by gunfire. Guns again," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said in a video shared on Twitter in response to Saturday's shooting. "Of course, I offer my prayers and concerns for those families who are struggling with the loss of their loved ones. But I also ask the question: 'When are we going to confront the real cause?' And that is a proliferation of guns, guns, guns."
\u201cWe are all tired of being hurt and devastated.\u201d— Sheila Jackson Lee (@Sheila Jackson Lee) 1683444574
Fox told USA TODAY that the number of mass killings in the U.S. began to rise in 2019, and he attributed their recent increase to an uptick in gun sales as well as the mental and financial strain of the coronavirus pandemic and political polarization. And he thinks these numbers are unlikely to decrease without a significant change.
"Will things go back to a more average level we saw a decade ago? Maybe," Fox said. "But given the condition of America and the weaponry that's available, I wouldn't bet on it."
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