There are at least 555 reasons to ask whether American children are safer from gun violence today than they were three years ago, when the unthinkable happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
That’s how many kids under the age of 12 have died from gunshots — both intentional and accidental — since Adam Lanza stormed into the school in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012, and shot dead 20 children and six staff members, according to an NBC News analysis.
Mass shootings have become unfortunately common in American life, so a few Silicon Valley investors are launching a $1 million competition to see if technology can reduce firearm violence. With the help of early Facebook investor Ron Conway, the Smart Tech Foundation is soliciting ideas on everything from biometric locks to crime-predicting algorithms.
“We looked at this and said there’s been a systemic failure in the level of innovation and capitalization in this area,” Smart Tech director and serial entrepreneur Jim Pitkow told Fast Company. He announced the program at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference in San Francisco yesterday.
This isn’t the first time Silicon Valley (and Conway) have incentivized their tech brethren to stop gun violence. Three months after Adam Lanza killed 20 children at Sandy Hook elementary, Conway’s Sandy Hook Promise launched a program to expedite investment in violence-reducing technologies.
For example, ShotSpotter outfits local law enforcement with an alert systems that can triangulate violence based on the audio-signal of a gunshot (the technology still has some bugs to get worked out).
On Dec. 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza — armed with his mother’s guns — stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and murdered 20 children and six adult members of staff. As the nation mourned in the wake of that unthinkable tragedy, many citizens and lawmakers raised their voices to demand stricter gun control laws, President Obama vowed to use his power to curb gun violence. “We’re not doing enough,” he said at a December vigil. “And we will have to change.” Tragically, change has been slow in coming.
According to Slate’s gun deaths tally project, at least 9,901 gun-related deaths in the United States have been reported by the media since the Newtown shooting.
This number, says Slate, is a gross underestimate of the actual number of deaths caused by guns in the last 10 months.
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Jillian Soto uses a phone to get information about her sister, Victoria Soto, a teacher at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, after a gunman killed over two dozen people, including 20 children. Victoria Soto, 27, was among those killed. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
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