More than 320 people have been killed and 1,600 injured in mass shootings so far in 2020, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, The Trace reports. The archive defines the incidents as any with four or more people wounded. By this account, there have been 395 mass shootings as of August 24, and almost 45 percent increase over the same period last year. If the pace holds, this year’s total will be the highest tally since the organization began tracking shootings five years ago. The mass shootings have disproportionately occurred in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Nearly 50 percent of the incidents took place in majority-Black census tracts, though under 10 percent of census tracts nationally have majority Black populations. The pattern held in almost every city that has had more than five mass shootings in 2020. In Chicago, 31 of 36 shootings with four or more victims happened in majority-Black census tracts. In Detroit and Milwaukee, each of which saw five mass shootings, all occurred in majority-Black neighborhoods.
The public setting of many mass shootings renders them horrifying. When a gunman kills or injures multiple bystanders in a predominantly Black or Latinx community, the bloodshed is written off by some journalists, politicians and onlookers as predictable, endemic to the neighborhood and not worthy of the same sympathy. For Black gun violence prevention advocates, the responses to mass shootings in Black and Brown neighborhoods are dispiritingly familiar. “When these mass shootings happen in white communities, everybody has a response: they have policies, investments, thoughts and prayers,” said Amber Goodwin of the Community Justice Action Fund. “When Black people are shot and killed, it’s a lack of response. Or if there is a response, it’s a divestment. It’s carceral.”
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Mass Shootings in Black and Brown neighborhoods exist in a different context than the larger white society. These are shootings primarily linked to drug and gang related violence and the numbers of wounded and killed victims are often less than when shootings happen in White America. Mass Shootings in the White Community are more the acts of deranged, hate filled, and angry sociopaths who become unglued when their false sense of entitlement is not adhered to. With Whites, it’s 100% purely hate driven, with blacks and latinos, it’s mostly alcohol and drug use driven or gang related, and often times, people settling petty disputes with gun violence. It’s not poverty, racism, unemployment, or any mental health problems, because most mentally ill aren’t violent, but people who use drugs and alcohol or are submerged in gang life are often extremely violent and will explode at a second’s for any reason. That’s the difference.