A report released this Monday (23) by the FBI, the US federal police, shows that the number of incidents caused by shooters has doubled in the United States in the last three years.
The document records that, in 2018, there were 30 actions perpetrated by one or more individuals with the intention of killing in populated areas. In 2021, that number reached 61.
The speed of growth of episodes also increased. In 2019, the figure remained stable compared to the previous year, in 30 cases – in 2017, there were 31 –, but it rose to 40 in 2020, an increase of 33%. Following that, there was a 52.5% jump in registrations in 2021, according to the FBI report.
In addition to the general number, other data indicate worsening. In 2020, the 40 incidents took place in 19 US states. The 61 stocks of 2021 were spread across 30 US regions. The number of deaths and injuries has also grown: from 38 deaths and 126 injuries two years ago to 103 and 140 last year.
To frame the episodes in the report as incidents caused by snipers, the FBI only considered cases in which the shootings took place in public places and in more than one place. The episodes, which resulted in mass deaths, could not have been connected to other crimes either.
Other aspects taken into account were the apparent spontaneous motivation of the aggressor, the methodology for choosing victims and whether the targets were people. Thus, cases of self-defense, those linked to violence generated by gangs or drug disputes or those arising from domestic problems were excluded.
According to the survey, the 2021 incident with the highest number of victims took place at an operations center of the FedEx delivery company in the city of Indianapolis, in the state of Indiana, where seven people were injured and eight were killed by a 19-year-old man. . He, a former company employee with a history of mental illness, had already been detained by the FBI for investigation the previous year.
The case with the highest number of deaths, however, occurred in Boulder, Colorado, in March of that year, when a shooting at a supermarket left at least ten people dead, including a police officer. The attacker was identified as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21 years old at the time of the attack. He lived in Arvada, a town near Boulder, and spent most of his life in the US.
The numbers compiled by the FBI draw even more attention at a time when the United States is dealing with yet another shooting that has shocked the country. Ten days ago, ten black people were killed in Buffalo, New York, by an 18-year-old man.
Payton Gendron opened fire on supermarket customers, in an action broadcast live on the internet, in which he also published a manifesto to justify the attack, based on racist theories, such as that blacks were taking the place of whites in society.
When visiting the site of the massacre, the President of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden, called for unity to fight the “poison of white supremacy”. He called the case domestic terrorism and said “hatred will not prevail.” “White supremacy will not have the final word. It was a racist attack, broadcast live to the world. What happened here was terrorism, domestic terrorism.”
The FBI report does not offer interpretations of the data, does not provide the racial classification of the victims, nor does it indicate the motivations that led to the occurrence of the incidents.
