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Thursday, Jan 3, 2013 7:12 PM UTC

Gun deaths rampant after Sandy Hook massacre

The numbers are simply staggering: An average of 18 people have been killed each day since December 14

By , Alternet

Topics: AlterNet, Sandy Hook Shootings, Newtown Massacre, Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado,

Gun deaths rampant after Sandy Hook massacre (Credit: defpicture via Shutterstock)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet There have been more than 400 guns deaths since the Newtown massacre on December 14, according to a new interactive project between Slate.com and the anonymous twitter user @gundeaths.

The two launched the project because, as Slate writes, there are few real-time chronicles of daily gun deaths in the United States, despite the daily mention of firearms and gun politics in the media since the shooting. In fact, the onslaught of reporting on guns has been so intense, The Huffington Post published an article this morning with the headline “So You’re Bored of the Newtown Massacre?”

Gun deaths have been a daily reality since the Newtown massacre less than three weeks ago, with an average of 18 people dying each day as a result of a fatal shooting, according to the data compiled by @gundeaths. Six of those deaths have been children under the age of 13, and another 21 were youths under the age of 17.

The vast majority of people who have died as a result of gun violence since Newtown were men. Out of the 406 fatal shootings in @gundeaths compilation, only 49 of the victims were women. For teenagers, the gender gap is even starker: 19 boys and only 2 girls have died of gun-related violence since Newtown.

The anonymous twitter user @gundeaths began reporting every instance of a fatal shooting he could find after the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting on July 20. His data set is incomplete, meaning that the number of gun deaths since Newtown likely exceeds 406.

The Huffington Post recently undertook a similar project, chronicling the first 100 gun deaths since the Sandy Hook massacre. According to their count, the United States surpassed 100 gun deaths on December 21, exactly one week after Newtown.

Other nations have experienced similar mass shootings in their histories. But nearly all have passed considerable gun safety legislation in the wake of their tragedies, which has dramatically reduced the number of future gun-related deaths.

The United States leads the world in having the most number of guns per person.

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