The deadly shooting inside a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado is the second mass shooting incident in less than a week. The incident in Colorado that killed 10 people – including a police officer – happened just a few days after a 21-year-old gunman shot and killed eight people in Atlanta, Georgia.

Prior to the two shooting incidents, the U.S. has been relatively calm. Nonprofit research group The Violence Project said that before the Atlanta spa mass shooting there had been no such killings since March 2020.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, gun violence in the U.S. was still relatively high in 2020. The organization said that it had recorded more than 600 gun-related incidents where more than four people were killed by one shooter. This was significantly higher than the 417 incidents reported in 2019.

The group said that many of the shootings were related to gang violence and domestic incidents where the perpetrator knew the victims. The shootings in Atlanta and Colorado are different in terms of the motivations behind them.

While authorities have yet to determine the exact motive of the recent mass shootings, most of the public have speculated that they may have been racially-motivated.

 In Atlanta, six out of the eight people that were killed were women of Asian descent. The killings have sparked a nationwide outcry and a call for the government to implement immediate action to stop violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Some politicians have blamed former President Donald Trump for fueling the flames of hate against Asians, particularly for his continued use of words such as “Kung Flu” and “the Chinese virus.”