gun violence – mackaycartoons

Wednesday March 17, 2021

March 31, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 17, 2021

The Colorado attack is the 7th mass shooting in 7 days in the US

The mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday took place less than a week after eight people were killed in a series of attacks on spas in Atlanta.

The two incidents are likely to spur discussion about gun control legislation in the United States, where firearm deaths are tragically common.

They are also among at least seven mass shootings in the past week across the United States — including three incidents on Saturday alone.

CNN defines a mass shooting as: a shooting incident which results in four or more casualties (dead or wounded) excluding the shooter(s).

Tuesday, March 16, Atlanta, Georgia: Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed when a White gunman stormed three spas, police said.

Wednesday, March 17, Stockton, California: Five people who were preparing a vigil in Stockton, in California’s Central Valley, were shot in a drive-by shooting, the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Department said. None had life-threatening injuries.

July 25, 2018

Thursday, March 18, Gresham, Oregon: Four victims were taken to the hospital after a shooting in the city east of Portland, police said in an initial report.

Saturday, March 20, Houston, Texas: Five people were shot after a disturbance inside a club, according to police. One was in critical condition after being shot in the neck, the rest were in stable condition, according to CNN affiliate KPRC.

Saturday, March 20, Dallas, Texas: Eight people were shot by an unknown assailant, one of whom died, according to police.

Saturday, March 20, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: One person was killed and another five were injured during a shooting at an illegal party, CNN affiliate KYW reported. “There were at least 150 people in there that fled and believed they had to flee for their lives,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

Monday, March 22, Boulder, Colorado: Ten people, including a Boulder police officer, were killed in a shooting at the King Soopers supermarket, according to police.

It’s unclear how this number of mass shootings compares to an average week in the US.

Though some official gun violence data is available, the US federal government does not have a centralized system or database to track firearm incidents and mass shootings nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks some gun violence data, nearly 40,000 people were killed in incidents involving firearms in 2019. (CNN)

Wednesday August 7, 2019

August 14, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 7, 2019

Toronto’s weekend of gun violence ‘frustrating, angering and sad,’ says Tory

The gun violence in Toronto during the Civic Holiday long weekend that saw 17 people shot during 14 separate incidents is “heartbreaking,” Mayor John Tory said Tuesday.

July 25, 2018

“It’s frustrating because we are doing a lot to try and get at it,” Tory told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

He said police resources have been beefed up in response to the violence, echoing remarks by police Chief Mark Saunders on Monday, but didn’t give specifics. Tory also called for stricter gun control and tougher sentences for gun-related crime.

“I’ve come to realize that there is no magic answer to this,” he said.

“So when this kind of thing happens in a concentrated way, it’s very frustrating, angering and sad. And bottom line, unacceptable.”

July 18, 2012

The most significant shootings were at the District 45 nightclub in suburban North York, where at least five people were injured, and at an Airbnb in the swanky Bridle Path neighbourhood where a man was left with life-threatening injuries.

Tory has pushed for a handgun ban, saying it would help address some of the city’s gun violence. City council debated a handgun ban in June, but it would require action by both the federal and provincial governments.

“If we have a choice of doing absolutely everything we can to stem this type of violence, then I do believe a handgun ban would make some difference, if it would stop a handful of the shootings and certainly any of the deaths that we see,” the mayor said.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told CBC News that Canadians will soon see a “strong and effective” package of proposals from Ottawa, but wouldn’t say whether a proposed ban would be included.

Stronger background checks, licence verification, better record-keeping, and a significant investment in a strategy to fight guns and gangs are some of the measures the federal government has already taken to curb gun violence, he said at a news conference Tuesday in Ottawa. (CBC)

Thursday, January 17, 2013

January 17, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, January 17, 2013

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

Slate partners with @GunDeaths for an interactive, crowdsourced tally of the toll firearms have taken since Dec. 14.

The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate is collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete (click here to see why, and to learn more about @GunDeaths, the Twitter user who helped us create this interactive). But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. If you know about a gun death in your community that isn’t represented here, please email a link to a news report to slatedata@gmail.com. And if you’d like to use this data yourself for your own projects, it’s open. You can download it here.

Update, June 19, 2013: As time goes on, our count gets further and further away from the likely actual number of gun deaths in America—because roughly 60 percent of deaths by gun are due to suicides, which are very rarely reported. When discussing this issue, please note that our number is by design not accurate and represents only the number of gun deaths that the media can find out about contemporaneously. Part of the purpose of this interactive is to point out how difficult it is to get accurate real-time numbers on this issue.

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 10/4/2013, roughly 26,278 people have died from guns in the U.S. since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news in our interactive below, and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is. (Source: Slate)