The Wednesday mass shooting at a high school in Florida was the 18th shooting at a school since the beginning of 2018, which amounts to is one shooting every 60 hours.
There have been over 6,500 shooting incidents across the U.S. so far, leading to the death of over 1,820 people and injuring more than 3,100 other.
The data have been compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit that tracks gun-related violence in the U.S.
According to the website, since January 69 children between the ages of 1-11 years and a staggering number of 333 teenagers (12-17 years) have been killed in various incidents.
As of Thursday, there have been 30 mass shootings, collectively killing over 58 people and injuring dozens more.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, a school shooting is "any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds, as documented by the press and, when necessary, confirmed through further inquiries with law enforcement or school officials."
That is the very definition of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Pompano Beach on Wednesday afternoon, where a former student who was fired for disciplinary reasons killed at least 17 people at his school.
The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Nikolaus Cruz was armed with an AR-15 rifle and what officials described as an endless number of magazines.
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The semi-automatic weapon, which was introduced by Colt in the 1960s, has virtually become the favorite weapon for mass murderers across the U.S. and has been linked to many similar shootings.
Last October, a gunman armed with 14 AR-15s and a cache of other deadly weapons opened fire on a music festival from his nearby hotel room leaving 58 people dead and 851 injured.
In September 2016, a gunman used stormed a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Killing 49 people and wounding 58 others using his AR-15.
Just two days after the shooting, the Huffington Post sent a group of reporters to see how long did it take to purchase the latest iteration of the deadly weapon. The result was astonishing: You can buy an AR-15 in Orlando in just 38 minutes.
In the latest instance of gun violence in the United States, at least 17 people were killed and several others injured in a shooting at a high school in the U.S. state of Florida.
The shooting occurred on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
It is estimated that there are between 270 million and 300 million guns in the U.S., about one per person, according to the New York Daily News.
Perhaps it is no surprise then that Statistics by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show firearms kill more than 33,000 people in the U.S. every year, a number that includes accidental discharges, murders and suicides.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
