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The month of August ended as it began: with an outburst of gunfire and a large death toll.
Seven people were killed near Odessa, Texas on Saturday, when an armed man started shooting blindly on cars, bringing the number of massive homicide victims committed to the crime. Gun at 53 for the month. Authorities brought Sunday to five the number of victims of the shooting in Odessa, not to mention the armed man.
The Department of Justice defines the term "mass murders" as three or more murders in a single episode, to the exclusion of the murder of an armed man. There is no legal definition of the term mass shooting, despite its frequent use by gun control groups and the media.
This month's loss of life was the heaviest in Texas, where four of the eight deadliest casualties occurred, including a August 3 massacre at a Walmart store in El Paso that killed 22 people.
The wave of gun violence left the country over-excited and catalyzed a more intense debate on gun control.
The carnage in western Texas on Saturday was the 38th gun massacre in the United States this year.
Here are some of the most deadly shootings up until now in 2019 based on figures from the Mass Shooting Tracker website and local media accounts. The death toll does not include those who perpetrated the attacks and all episodes of 2019 are not listed.
August 4 – 9 killed
Dayton, Ohio
August 3 – 22 killed
El Paso
Twenty-two people were killed and 26 wounded in a shootout targeting buyers at a Walmart store in El Paso, a predominantly Hispanic border town. The suspect, a white man in his 20s who was arrested, wrote an anti-immigrant manifesto that was posted shortly before the attack, authorities said.
July 28 – 3 dead
Gilroy, California
An annual festival of garlic in an agricultural community south of San Jose became lethal when a 19-year-old man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle that he had legally purchased in Nevada. The shooter is killed in the attack. The victims included a 13-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy.
July 6th – 5 dead deaths
St. Louis County, Mo.
The bodies of five men who were fatally wounded by gunfire were found in a building by police officers in northern St. Louis County, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The victims were between 37 and 65 years old. Two men were arrested during the killings, which police said were linked to a "drug-related activity," The Post-Dispatch reported.
June 8 – 5 dead
White Swan, Wash.
Five members of Yakama Nation were killed in White Swan, an isolated community on the Yakama Indian Reserve in central Washington State. Four people were arrested during the shooting, the latest act of a cycle of criminal activity in the reserve, which lies between the Cascade Mountains and the Columbia River. Two of the men accused in the killings have taken a child hostage under the threat of a firearm, authorities said.
May 31 – 12 dead
Virginia Beach, Virginia
February 15 – 5 dead
Aurora, Ill.
An unhappy employee who was fired from his job returned to a factory in the suburbs of Chicago with a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun with a laser sight, authorities said he used to kill five of his former colleagues. The gunman was not supposed to be armed, his firearms license having been revoked a year earlier because of a criminal assault conviction. Among the victims was an intern who was on his first day of work and an eight-year-old grandfather.
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