大威力步枪泛滥酿成更多惨剧 研究显示：美国枪击案致死率上升，死亡人数创新高
Gun violence in the US has become more lethal, research suggests

About 57% of firearm fatalities in 2021 occurred at the scene of the shooting, up 9% since 1999, according to a research letter published Wednesday in the JAMA Surgery journal. For this analysis, researchers used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and excluded suicides and other self-inflicted firearm injuries.

Nearly 49,000 people died from firearm injuries in the US in 2021, CDC data shows – an unprecedented surge of about 23% over two years during the Covid-19 pandemic.

And a shift in the type of firearms that are being bought and used is a key factor making shootings more lethal, experts say.

“It’s leaning more and more towards military-grade, higher velocity, higher lethality type of weapons,” said Dr. Eric Fleegler, an emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“That includes larger magazine capacity so they can shoot more bullets, the ability to fire them at faster rates, and quite frankly, just bigger, faster bullets which cause more damage to a human body.”

Federal data shows that handguns are the most common murder weapon, used in more than half of all homicides that involve firearms. But rifles, such as the AR-15, are becoming more frequently used.

Nearly 4% of firearm homicides in 2021 involved a rifle, killing 447 people, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s more than twice as many deaths and nearly twice as common compared to firearm homicides in 2015.

And the true scope of America’s gun epidemic is far broader than the deaths it causes, experts say.

“Deaths from firearm injuries are horrible tragedies, but they are unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg,” said Fleegler, who has studied gun violence but was not involved in this research.

There are many others who suffer physically from gunshot wounds and a deep emotional toll on families and communities, he said.

Ten of the 17 deadliest mass killings in the United States since 2012 involved AR-15s.

Now, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults own at least one AR-15. That’s roughly 16 million people, storing roughly 20 million guns designed to mow down enemies on the battlefield with brutal efficiency. Two-thirds of these were crafted in the past decade.

The AR-15,is materially different from traditional handguns. The rifle fires very small bullets at very fast speeds. The projectiles don’t move straight and smooth through human targets like those from a traditional handgun. Their velocity turns them unstable upon penetration, so that they tumble through flesh and vital organs. This so-called blast effect literally tears people apart. A trauma surgeon notes,“youdon’t see the muscle…just bone and skin and missing parts.”Another mentions tissue that“crumbled into your hands.”