A headline about America’s gun crisis says it all: “1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days.”
If it weren’t so easy to obtain a gun in the United States, Omar Mateen, 29, who spoke often of violent intentions before going on his three-hour-long shooting rampage in a popular gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, wouldn’t have been able to buy the semi-automatic assault rifle and pistol he used to kill 49 people and wound 53 others. The Pulse nightclub attack was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. It brought the number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. this year to 6,025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
“We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world,” deplored President Barack Obama after the San Bernardino attack last December.
