title:  Heartbreaking: This Democratic Senator Just Tweeted The Entire Mass Shooting History Of 2015
text: A Democratic Senator decided to close out 2015 by raising a strong awareness of just how bad America s gun violence problem is. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) made a list of every mass shooting, including the number injured or killed, and posted it to his Twitter account. The list can be paged through, with each entry showing the number of injured and dead.Take a few moments and page through the list below. The tragedy that was 2015 becomes quickly apparent.#ICYMI   for my year in review I listed out every single mass shooting in 2015. They're all here: https://t.co/bUSKcjHs2x  Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015While paging through the list, the reality of our problem with guns becomes undeniable to even the most backwards, gun-toting, Tea Party patriot. Contrasted with a nation like Japan, which averages less than 1 gun death per 100,000 people most years (sometimes averaging so low the statistic is virtually zero), you can see that we simply do not have to live with this as a reality of our society.Many of the incidents that were included never made it to the mainstream media, because they were just not sensational enough. Let s think about that for a minute. In Japan, there was a year when 22 shootings occurred. It became a national scandal. In America, if we had a year with 22 gun deaths, the only  newsworthy  portion of it would be how America  solved  its problem with gun violence.Senator Murphy added the following comment to his post:In 2015 there were 372 mass shootings   incidents where four or more people where shot, including the shooter. I went through each and every one of them on shootingtracker.com, and tweeted out the stories. In the face of this carnage, there is no excuse for our inaction.Senator Murphy s context is very important. Only incidents where four or more people were shot made his list. There are far more that did not. The total number of shootings for 2015 so far stands at an astounding 52,339, with 13,296 deaths. To add a bit of context to the total, only 1,935 were able to be deemed  accidental,  which includes most acts of irresponsible use or storage of firearms.Very slowly, things are beginning to change. President Obama has plans, by way of executive order, to increase the requirements for background checks as well as strengthen the requirements for reporting lost or stolen guns. Coupled with California s new initiative allowing state government to seize guns from those deemed a menace to society, 2016 could mark a slight turning point in NRA dominance over gun safety in America.Featured image via senate.gov