[0:00]You may feel like there's a mass shooting in the US every time you look at the news. The fact is, America has more mass shootings than any other high-income country in the world.
[0:10]And that number is rising.
[0:14]The FBI tracks mass shootings where four or more people are killed. Looking back over time, you can see that the number of these events and the fatalities have risen dramatically.
[0:26]And this decade is on track to follow that trend. So what is happening?
[0:30]There's a range of complex factors that lead to mass shootings, and each incident has its own unique set of circumstances.
[0:37]But one undeniable fact is that there are more civilian-owned guns per person here in the US than anywhere else in the world.
[0:46]In fact, when you break down the number of firearms in the US, it comes down to more than one gun per person.
[0:52]And that number is also climbing.
[0:57]During the uncertainty of the pandemic, about one in five American households reported purchasing a gun.
[1:04]That means that now, almost half of all American adults live in a house with a gun.
[1:10]For most gun owners in the US, firearms are not just a constitutional right, they're also a way to protect themselves.
[1:16]So what is being done to reduce mass shootings?
[1:19]There was a ban on assault rifles in 1994, but it was dropped 10 years later when a Republican-led Congress failed to renew it.
[1:27]In the years since, assault rifles like the AR-15 have been used in some of the country's deadliest mass shootings.
[1:34]From Sandy Hook in 2012 to Parkland in 2018, and Uvalde in 2022.
[1:42]After each tragedy, there are calls to action around mental health and guns.
[1:45]Some want to limit access to guns, others to arm more Americans for self-defense.
[1:50]And what we see time and again is that after a mass shooting, when politicians push for gun control, it actually causes gun and ammunition sales to spike.
