Mass shooting in Maine, Lewiston is the deadliest mass shooting in the US this year – with more than 500 shootings recorded

America has reached a grim milestone with more than 500 mass shootings this year, while a massacre in Lewiston Maine has become the deadliest on record.

The mass shooting Wednesday evening in Lewiston, Maine, left at least 22 dead and up to 60 injured at three different locations.

Including this shooting, the U.S. has seen 565 mass shootings so far this year, the data shows. This makes this the third year in a row that the country has reached the grim milestone, before November.

Maine authorities ordered residents to shelter in place and warned to “stay off the roads to allow emergency responders to access hospitals.”

The devastating shooting in Maine will add another tragic incident to this year’s already alarming numbers.

A photo released by sheriffs showed a white man carrying an AR-15-style rifle and a laser optic entering the Sparetime Recreation Center wearing black combat pants and a brown tank top.

The neighboring city of Auburn is also on lockdown as the shooter remains at large.

The shooting in Maine, which left at least 22 dead, has become the deadliest mass shooting this year.

So far this year, more than 15,000 people have been killed by gun violence.

A day earlier, a 19-year-old man was killed and three victims were injured in Tuesday’s shooting in North Carolina. Two suspects were arrested.

A shooting last month in Denver that injured five people pushed the number above 500, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The increase in gun violence is part of a chilling trend: Five years ago, the country had never seen more than 500 shootings in a year, according to the research group.

Before the shooting in Maine, the deadliest shooting this year was the attack on Monterey Park, CA in January, in which gunman Huu Can Tran, 72, killed 11 people and injured nine in a predominantly Asian area on the eve of the Lunar New Year. .

Gun violence at a Sweet 16 birthday party in Dadeville, AL, also shocked the nation, killing four young people and injuring 32 – the most victims of any shooting so far in 2023.

Gun Violence Archive, the independent organization that collects the data, defines a mass shooting as a shooting in which four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooter.

In August, a gunman opened fire at a historic biker bar in Trabuco Canyon in Orange County, California, killing three people and wounding six before being shot by police.

In another incident, eight people were killed in a January 4 shooting in Cedar City, Utah, in which Michael Haight killed his wife, their five children and his mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself.

School shootings are also on the rise, if the trend continues as expected this year, with as many as 236 incidents recorded by another research team, the K-12 School Shooting database.

The deadliest school shooting this year left six dead and six injured by transgender gunman Audrey Hale, who opened fire on March 27.

Three nine-year-old students and three adults were among those killed in the attack on The Covenant Christian school in Nashville.

In the latest shootings, the number of mass shootings has risen to 564.

In September, the 500 mark was exceeded late in the evening in Denver.

Then, around 1 a.m. Sunday, a shooting in El Paso, Texas, killed a 19-year-old man and injured five others.

A shooting in Dorchester, Massachusetts seriously injured five people, including a child who suffered life-threatening injuries, Boston police said.

The FBI defines a mass shooting as “one or more individuals actively involved in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” — a different metric than most organizations that consider the number of victims as such.

According to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, there are about 120 guns for every 100 Americans.

No other country has more civilian guns than people: About 44 percent of American adults live in a household with a firearm.

According to a November 2020 Gallup poll, about a third personally own one. A third of American adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns.

However, multiple studies show that when people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths, including suicide, homicide, and unintentional injuries, are more common.

Mass shootings also lead to a demand for more guns, with many Americans feeling they are “safer” if they personally own a gun.

Gun violence is eight times higher than in Canada, which has the seventh highest gun ownership rate in the world.