HUDSON— There have been a combined 402 mass shootings just this year in 2025 alone. It is currently day 290 of the year, which means an average of about 1.4 mass shootings happen every single day in the United States.
That’s more than a statistic — it’s a reflection of how normal this level of violence has become. What should shock us has turned into a daily headline, one that many people scroll past without even pausing anymore.
A Month of Violence Across the U.S.
I started this article after Sept. 10. On that day, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. I like many teens saw the video on social media as it spread around at rapid speed. Police identified the suspect as Tyler James Robinson, who was taken into custody shortly after the attack.
That same day, a 16-year-old student opened fire at Evergreen High School in Colorado, injuring two classmates before turning the gun on himself.
Both of those investigations are ongoing.
Unfortunately, I thought I would talk about shootings so far this year as though it was stop there. But each day, it seemed I had to update my statistics. I kept on having to ask our journalism teacher Ms. Browning to extend my deadline. The story kept developing.
Within weeks, there was a string of shootings, nearly one right after the other, on Sept. 28. In Indianapolis, Indiana, three people were killed and one was injured, and in Selma, Alabama, yet another person died and three others were injured. Both suspects remain unknown. In Eagle Pass, Texas, police reported that 34-year-old Keryan Jones shot and killed two people and left seven others wounded before being arrested.
That same day, in New Orleans, Louisiana, another shooting left one dead and three wounded, and the gunman is still at large.
Michigan also had several shootings that day: four people were injured in Highland Park. In Grand Blanc, 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford opened fire at a LDS church before setting it ablaze. He killed five people and wounded eight others before police shot and killed him.
The violence didn’t start there though. On Sept. 27, in Southport, North Carolina, Nigel Max Edge, also known as Sean Debevoise, killed three people and injured six. Separate shootings in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Alexandria, Louisiana, left eight more people wounded.
During the first weekend of October, gunfire in Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama, and Buena Vista Township, Michigan, left several dead and many others hurt — including a mass shooting in Montgomery that killed two and injured twelve. Just one day later, on Oct. 5, Nashville, Tennessee, and Fort Worth, Texas, reported shootings of their own. Nashville had four people injured, while Fort Worth saw one person killed and five wounded.
In all, these recent shootings across ten states left at least 19 people dead and more than 70 injured in just over a week. Police are still searching for suspects in many of these cases.
I’d like to believe that after this is published, I wouldn’t have to update this article with more shootings, with more deaths come Dec. 31.
At what point do we stop calling this “unbelievable”? Because it keeps happening — again and again — and it’s clearly something we should believe by now. It’s part of our reality, and that’s exactly the problem.
The Bigger Picture
From the data I found from the last five years, the number of mass shootings in the U.S. has been alarmingly high. In 2020, there were 716 mass shootings, not counting all the other shootings that didn’t meet that definition. From those mass shootings alone, 686 people were killed and 2,814 were injured.
The following years weren’t much better: in 2021 there were 830, in 2022 there were 759, and in 2023, 576. Each year, hundreds of lives are lost and thousands are injured. On average, that’s about two mass shootings every single day.
Those numbers are easy to say but hard to really understand. Behind every statistic are families who will never be the same — children who lost parents, parents who lost children, and entire communities left grieving.
In fact, our former editor-in-chief Avani Kashlikar wrote a piece in 2023 for The Big Red “When is Enough Enough?
The piece reacted to the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, where six people were killed, and questioned how mass violence has become so routine. The writer urges action beyond school programs like Choose Love, arguing that real change depends on stronger laws and community responsibility.
“Each day, parents send their students to school, fearing that this is the day that they send their child to their demise,” Kashilar reflected.
And still, two years later we have more deaths and no solutions.
For many Americans, especially young people, this constant stream of gun violence feels overwhelming. It’s becoming something we hear about too often, and yet each story represents real people, real pain, and real loss. As students, we grow up doing ALICE lockdown drills and watching the news fill with tragedy after tragedy. It’s hard not to wonder: if so many people are dying and getting hurt, why hasn’t anything changed?
Maybe that’s the hardest part — realizing that while the headlines keep coming, the action doesn’t. Until we decide as a country that this can’t be “normal,” the numbers will just keep rising, and so will the fear.
