US Gun Violence Left Over 43,500 Victims in 2022

On Wednesday, the Gun Violence Archive's latest report showed that the United States has suffered roughly 640 mass shootings and lost over 43,500 lives to gun violence in 2022.

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"As of Tuesday, 306 children under age 12 were killed by guns and another 668 were injured nationwide. For those ages 12-17, 1,328 were killed and 3,734 were injured," the Common Dreams pointed out.

One of the victims is Justin Powell, a 16-year-old boy who loved basketball and music but unfortunately died in a shootout at an apartment complex in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. "I can't live without my baby," his mother, Natasha Hinton, said while trying to hold back tears. "I don't know what to do."

"A week before Christmas, families should be preparing to celebrate," Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement. "Instead, we have parents in Atlanta doing what no parent should ever have to do: laying their children to rest."

This summer, a gunman broke into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 students and two teachers with an AR-15-style rifle in the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Faith Mata, a 21-year-old college student, lost her little sister Tess in the massacre. "Our life has changed forever," she said during a hearing on Capitol Hill this month. "It has darkened because our light has left."

"Tess will never get to experience the life we had prayed she would live, she will never graduate high school, never fall in love herself, never be present at my wedding," Mata continued. "We will never know how scared she was in her last moments in that classroom."

In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, Biden signed into law what has been described as a gun safety bill before the end of June but critics and gun control advocates have argued the measure is far from enough to diminish America's gun violence.

President Joe Biden has recently renewed a call to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the United States. However, it is unlikely for such a proposal to be approved by Congress with Republicans taking control of the House for the next term and advocating for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.