Many dead in Las Vegas shooting amid gun violence epidemic in US

A man who fatally shot five people and critically wounded a 13-year-old girl at apartments near Las Vegas has killed himself, authorities said, as another incident of gun violence shakes the world's most heavily armed society.

The North Las Vegas Police Department said on Tuesday that 57-year-old Eric Adams killed himself as he was confronted by officers in a neighbourhood in North Las Vegas.

Police had been searching for him since Monday night's shootings in separate apartment units.

The department hasn't disclosed a motive for the shootings.

A spokesperson for the police department didn't immediately respond to phone and emailed requests for more information.

Victims

Names of the victims have not been released, though police said that four women and one man were among those killed, according to the newspaper.

Police said initially they found two women dead while investigating reports of the shooting.

The police department said one of them was in her early 40s and the other in her late 50s.

While officers were investigating, the department said, they learned a teen girl had been taken to a hospital with critical gunshot wounds and that there could be more victims in a nearby apartment.

Officers then found the bodies of two women in their mid-20s and a man in his early 20s. All five victims had been shot, police said.

Public health crisis

Violent crime dropped in 2023, reversing a coronavirus pandemic-era spike, but firearms are the No. 1 killer of children in the US, according to research from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

According to the latest numbers on Gun Violence Archive, the number of mass shootings in 2024 so far stands at 249 shootings in the US.

The current statistics show 8,125 homicides, 110 children and 566 teens tragically killed.

And there have been 12 mass killings by firearms in 2024, according to data tracked by the AP news agency.

A mass killing is defined as an attack in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, within 24 hours.

Also on Tuesday, the US surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

Efforts to control guns are often stymied by the courts.

The conservative-majority US Supreme Court expanded gun rights in 2022, changing the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.

It recently overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the rapid-fire gun accessories used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.