Texas shooting: Church massacre 307th mass killing in US so far in 2017

Devin Patrick Kelley's gun rampage at rural Baptist chapel in Sutherland Springs only latest firearms tragedy to strike America

(AP)

On Sunday, at least 26 people were killed and several others were injured when a man approached the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and started shooting.

The incident marked the 307th mass shooting in 2017, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in the US. To put this into perspective, we are 310 days into the year, which means the US has had nearly as many mass shootings as days in 2017.

Americans are more likely to die from gun violence than many leading causes of death combined, with some 11,000 people in the US killed in firearm assaults each year.

There is no broadly accepted definition of a mass shooting. Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are "shot and/or killed" at "the same general time and location."

The government also doesn't have an official definition. In 2013, a report from the Congressional Research Service, known as Congress's think tank, described mass shootings as those in which shooters "select victims somewhat indiscriminately" and kill four or more people — a higher bar than Gun Violence Archive's, as it doesn't take injuries into account.

In 2013, a federal mandate lowered that threshold to three deaths. By this definition, using data from Gun Violence Archive, the Las Vegas event was the 38th mass shooting in the US in 2017.

Data from Gun Violence Archive also shows that more than 13,000 people have died from gun-related violence so far this year and more than 26,900 others were injured.

There have been seven classifiable incidents since last Friday, giving an idea of the scale of the tragedy (Business Insider)

Here's a complete list of the mass shootings — as defined by Gun Violence Archive — that have occurred in the US so far in 2017.

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