A mass shooting occurs roughly once a week, setting a record pace within the United States during the first few months of 2023.

Since 2006, 2,842 people have died in mass killings, according to a database from USAToday. So far this year, 88 lives were lost in 17 mass shootings over a period of 111 days, all from gun violence.

The last year in which the rate was this high was 2009, which had a final count of 32 mass killings and 172 fatalities. 2019 the most total killings, with 230 lives lost across 45 mass killings. The annual average since 2006 is 31.1 mass killings and 162 victims per year.

“We shouldn’t necessarily expect that this — one mass killing every less than seven days — will continue,” Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox told NBC. “Hopefully it won’t.”

Despite guns being used in each incident this year, very few gun control laws have been passed. While Michigan implemented criminal background check policies, several states have rolled back restrictions on guns, including North Carolina, which recently made it legal to purchase a pistol without a permit.

Family members of mass shooting victims have since directly pursued action against gun manufacturers, filing lawsuits to hold them accountable for their product's role in the deaths. Despite overwhelming anti-gun protests in Tennessee, the state legislature recently passed a bill shielding manufacturers from legal action.

Representative Justin Jones, a Democrat who was expelled from the State House by the Republican majority for peacefully protesting for gun reform, decried the Tennessee legislators for approving the bill.

"There’s a soul sickness in our state when Tennessee Republican legislators are more concerned with protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits, than children from being killed by mass shootings," he wrote on Twitter. "We said, protect children not guns — they choose the guns. This is morally insane."