The Daily Iowan spoke with several University of Iowa students to hear about how safe they feel in the area in light of local and national gun violence.
In 2022, 44,320 people in the U.S. died because of gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent non-profit research group dedicated to collecting data about national shootings.
As of March 21, the Archive has reported 116 mass shootings, meaning there’s been more than one mass shooting a day in many cases. The Archive classifies mass shootings as incidents where four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.
Within the past year, Iowa City has also been alerted to local shootings. More recently, Iowa City law enforcement confirmed a gunshot was fired in the early morning on Feb. 26 on South Clinton Street.
A month earlier, on Jan. 14, multiple shots were fired in the Pedestrian Mall near campus, and in October of 2022, one person was killed and another was injured in a shooting outside of H-Bar. H-Bar also experienced a shooting on Aug. 7, in which a woman was shot and survived.