LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
El Paso, now Dayton. Those two cities join the sad shorthand we use for deadly mass shootings in the U.S., along with Parkland, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Orlando. As soon as I say one place, you will no doubt think of another - Aurora, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook. Dayton now becomes the 251st mass shooting in the U.S. just this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks these incidents. They define a mass shooting as an event in which at least four people were shot, excluding the shooter. We have become familiar with reporting this kind of violence. Sometimes the incidents don't really register beyond a headline given the rest of the news. Sometimes, like this morning, they cannot and should not be ignored.
Here are some communities where the grief is still fresh. Gilroy, Calif. - five dead, 11 wounded on July 28. White Swan, Wash. - five dead, two wounded on June 8. Virginia Beach, Va. - where 13 people died and five were wounded at a municipal building on May 31. In Phoenix, Ariz., on March 19, two people died, four were wounded. And on February 16, five died in Clinton, Miss., after a 12-hour standoff. Just a few of the many places where mass shootings happened in 2019. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.