Before boarding Air Force Two, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the increase in mass shootings in the United States and called for a ban on assault weapons in the aftermath of the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed.
Ruth Whitfield was a victim of a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket, and Harris was in Buffalo to attend her funeral.
Since 2018, Education Week has tracked school shootings. According to its database, 119 incidents of this nature have occurred since then.
This year, there were 27 school shootings with injuries or fatalities, according to NPR.
As of Tuesday, the Gun Violence Archive, an unbiased data collection organization, had recorded 212 mass shootings so far this year. It characterizes a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot or killed.
