Road rage is sky-high across the U.S.
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Road rage has been on a steady creep in the United States since 2016, but new analysis published this month offers a clearer glimpse into the staggering and needlessly tragic episodes of gun violence plaguing the nation’s roads and highways.
Everytown Research and Policy reported on April 4 that more than 500 people in America were shot and wounded or killed in more than 700 road rage conflicts last year. That translates to a shooting, injury, or killing on the road roughly every 17 hours.
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There’s not a definitive answer on why road rage incidents are exploding, but researchers suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic might be the culprit, as it has played a significant role in upping people’s stress levels across the board.
Road Rage Deaths and Injuries, 2016 to 2021 by Daily Kos on Scribd
Many of the factors that upped stress during the pandemic also coincide with the typical triggers for gun violence generally, like unemployment and a lack of affordable housing.
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Domestic violence shootings have also increased since the pandemic began. Just this week in Kentucky—home to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s constituents—the state’s attorney’s office noted that domestic gun violence rocketed up an additional 30% in 2021 compared to just before the pandemic began in 2019.
The uptick in road rage is not surprising either when one considers the huge number of guns that Americans purchased in the last few years alone. In 2020, the nation broke its own record for gun sales with 22.8 million guns sold. In 2021, according to one estimate by the National Firearm Industry and Trade Association, sales dipped just slightly with 18.5 million guns sold.
The number of first-time gun buyers also went up by about a third last year, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. This January, the organization reported that 5.4 million people purchased a gun for the very first time in 2021.
Though gun violence and road rage have become more ubiquitous, the push by law enforcement across the U.S. to track and study the data has been slow to come online and no federal database on road rage yet exists. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Dallas Police Department, for example, only began tracking road rage shootings for the first time last year.
According to the Times, the department found that in Dallas alone, 45 people were wounded and 11 were killed by guns in a heated moment of road rage. Even in cities like Austin, Texas, incidents were up. The city’s population is largely liberal and though liberals often do not own guns at the same rate as their conservative counterparts, that did not stop Austin police from reporting more than 160 episodes of people “pointing or firing a gun at drivers” and 15 road rage shootings.