One in 15 Americans has been present in a shooting, according to a study

One in 15 Americans has witnessed in his life a shooting and the proportion is greater among men, younger generations and black people, indicates an academic study published this month.

The investigation, in which 10,000 citizens of adulthood were interviewed, shows that 7 % of the study subjects have been present at least once in their life in an event in which at least four people were involved in a shooting, and that during the event 2 % was injured, both by a firearm and other reasons.

The study published by Jama Network Open and conducted by sociologists and criminologists from universities in the states of Colorado and Minesota, «evidences wide direct exposure and experiences with shootings in the United States», which, underlines, «have become a significant public health problem» in the country.

The academic work throws other striking figures, such as that around 75 % of those who were not injured have suffered anguish or that more than half of those who claimed to have witnessed a fray with firearms did so in the last ten years.

The main author of the study, David Pyrooz, a doctor in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder, has indicated in a separate statement that the analysis establishes the existence of a generation, which has grown after the massacre of the Columbine Institute in 1999, which has a set of experiences very differentiated from that of older people and that their exposure to the shootings has been normalized.

According to this Wednesday data from the NGO Gun Violence Archive, since the beginning of the year they have died in the US 2,687 people in incidents with firearms and 4,433 have been injured, while 48 mass shootings have occurred, a term that includes a minimum of four people injured or deceased, not counting the aggressor.