Gun control

Gun deaths soar to record 'American carnage'

When President Donald Trump invoked the term "American carnage" in his inaugural address, he wasn't referring to gun violence, but the label undeniably fits: Record numbers of Americans are killing themselves or each other with firearms.

During the first year of Trump's presidency, guns were used to kill 39,773 Americans, the greatest number of such deaths since the government began tracking them in 1979, according to a recent report from federal health officials. Suicides made up more than half the total.

A United States awash in firearms, approximately one for every resident, continues to lead the world in gun-related homicides at a rate four to 16 times higher than any other advanced nation.

Two of the five worst mass shootings in recent U.S. history occurred in 2017, including in Las Vegas where a gunman barricaded in a high-rise hotel slaughtered 58 people at a music concert below. Mass killings kept happening last year: at a high school in Parkland, Florida; another school in Santa Fe, Texas; a synagogue in Pittsburgh; and a bar in Thousand Oaks, California. Then, of course, there was the daily toll of less-publicized shootings and self-inflicted fatalities.