Dying by knocking on the wrong door or taking the wrong path: the wave of recent shootings that causes concern in the US

Knocking on the wrong door, driving down the wrong street, approaching someone else’s car or looking for a ball in the neighbor’s yard are small confusions that in the US can cost you your life.

These are common mistakes of daily life that some Americans have been gunned down for in recent days.

One of those victims was barely 6 years old.

Beyond the mass shootings that rock the country with increasing regularity, these small incidents, which occur almost daily, They are the ones that have become the leading cause of fatalities from firearms in the US.

“The main type of incidents we have is one or two people getting shot,” Mark Bryant, director of the National Archive of Gun Violence, told the BBC.

So far, 165 mass shootings have been estimated so far this year, but thousands of minor incidents.

The wrong door or entrance

According to the Gun Violence Archive, an average of 50 people die each day in the US, not counting suicides, from incidents involving firearms. In addition 100 people are injured.

Mass shootings are a small part of the overall framework of nationwide firearms incidents.

Although these events are the ones that attract the attention of public opinion, they only represent 6% of deaths and injuries from this cause in the country.

Most of the stories are like those of Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old teenager who was shot by a man on April 13 after the young man mistakenly rang his doorbell.

“He rang the wrong doorbell and the owner of the house shot him twice. The doctors cannot believe he survived,” Cleo Nagbe, the young man’s mother, told local media.

Or the story of Kaylin Gillis, a 20-year-old girl who died on April 15 after a man shot her because the car in which she was traveling with her friends drove into the wrong driveway.

Also what happened to two young people who tried to open a car that was not theirs in a parking lot in the state of Texas and the person inside got out of the vehicle and started shooting, seriously injuring one of them.

Or the 6-year-old girl and her father who were shot by a neighbor because a basketball landed in their yard.

“The bullet went in and out of my cheek,” the girl told a local news network..

And that’s just the stories that make national headlines.

“Gun violence affects every community in some way, even if it’s less visible than a mass shooting,” said Kelly Drane, research director for gun safety advocacy group Giffords.

“These last few weeks people are realizing: Gun violence happens in our country every day. Guns are costing the nation dearly on a human level,” he added.

Not all communities are affected equally; Black people die from firearms at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the US.

Firearm-related deaths rose sharply among black and Hispanic children during the covid-19 pandemic, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Now, the debate that mass shootings cause every day is more polarized.

Gun rights supporters advocate fewer restrictions, while advocates of greater control continue to push for laws limiting access.

The yessecond andAmendment to the US Constitution it guarantees Americans the right to firearms, although the extent of that right is the subject of much political and legal debate.

Conservatives, who often support second amendment rights, blame gun violence on broader mental health crisis and to the increase in crime.

Liberals, who tend to favor tighter regulation, point out the tall levels of access to firearms in the US as the cause of violence.

Between January 1 and April 20, 2023, 12,719 people have died in incidents of armed violence, according to data provided by the Armed Violence Archive.

Since April 13, the day Ralph Yarl went to the wrong house, there have been 845 incidents related to weapons in the US, According to preliminary data from the Archive of the Gun Violence.

It should be noted that a small fraction of these incidents did not involve shooting, such as a case that occurred on April 13 in which an adult left a loaded gun in the bathroom of an Atlanta, Georgia, elementary school.

Overall, those 845 incidents resulted in 743 injuries and 328 deaths.

And what is certain is that next week there will be more.

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