During just the first week of the new year, North Carolina experienced two mass shootings. In both incidents, minors were injured or lost their lives. This again opens the debate about what is being done (or not being done) to prevent these tragedies from happening.
In the first shooting, a gunman opened fire at a busy restaurant in broad daylight, wounding five people, including a minor. Less than a week later, a man killed his entire family, including his three children. Why won’t the mass shootings in North Carolina stop?
Attack at a restaurant
On Sunday, January 1, around 2:00 p.m. someone inside a car fired 11 shots toward a Subway restaurant in a shopping center in Durham, wounding five people. Two of the victims, a minor and an adult, were hospitalized with serious injuries.
Father kills his entire family
In an event that shocked the community, High Point police revealed that on Saturday, January 7, a father killed his wife and his three children before turning the gun on himself. The youngest victim was 10 years old.
According to investigators, the attacker, Robert Crayton, Jr., 45, was dealing with mental illness, but they do not know for certain what led him to kill his family.
Why are there so many mass shootings in North Carolina?
The most widely accepted definition of a mass shooting is a single incident in which four or more people are injured or killed in a shooting, usually at the same place and time.
In 2021, 22 mass shootings occurred in North Carolina, double the number of incidents recorded in 2018, according to the organization Gun Violence Archive. In 2022, there were 21 mass shootings in the state.
Perhaps most troubling is the 27% increase in the number of teen gun violence victims in the state.
Victims ages 12 to 17 in North Carolina
| Year | Deaths | Injured | Total |
| 2021 | 55 | 93 | 148 |
| 2022 | 61 | 127 | 188 |
There are multiple factors that can explain this plague of gun violence. Some say that it is the high dropout rate or the elimination of extracurricular and summer programs due to the pandemic. Others talk about policies that have weakened the police (after multiple race-related incidents) or the lack of access to mental health care. But there is something else.
During 2022, the Gun Violence Archive recorded 648 mass shootings across the country. In 2014, this number was 273. What does the United States have that makes it so vulnerable? The answer: easy access to firearms.
What can we do?
“Gun violence disproportionately affects the Latino community. We have seen statistics that are very worrying. In 2020, more than 5,000 Latinos were killed by firearms. In addition, the leading cause of death for Latino youth between the ages of 15 and 19 is gun violence,” Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Senior Advisor at Giffords, told La Noticia. Giffords is an organization that promotes the establishment of gun control laws.
“Having more firearms on the streets is dangerous. That is something that we Latinos understand very well because we have left our countries fleeing violence, and we cannot allow this to happen in the United States,” added Mucarsel-Powell, who became the first South American-born immigrant to be elected to Congress in 2018.
According to the Pew Research Center, 65% of Latinos think gun control laws should be stricter. Additionally, six out of 10 Latino adults believe that if guns were more difficult to obtain, there would be fewer mass shootings.
What is holding back our legislators from taking action? While they do nothing, the tragedies continue to occur.
