It just seems like it because the news media is spoon feeding it to you that way.
Every year there is thousands of shootings and deaths. There is thousands of murders by guns and other means) and deaths in many nations of the world, especialy diverse ones.
If there was just 365 shooting deaths a year in this nation of hundreds of millions of people, they could have one per day to plaster on everyone's tv in the nation. There is many more than that, yet it is still a minor cause of death. You are much more likely to die driving somewhere, eating the wrong foods, drowning, having a doctor make a mistake treating you for something etc
We have hundreds of millions of people of all ages, and numerous deaths and births happen every day.
That means every day there is multiple shootings in the country, and has been for years. Some offensive, some defensive, and many more uses of firearms in defense that don't result in a shot.
There is also several times more fatal car crashes, many accidental, some intentional caused by people racing or negligence through drunk driving, looking for something while driving, on phone etc
Every year there is many drowning deaths, far more than firearm related deaths. If the news media sensationalized the death of every person that drowned, they could cover dozens of the worst stories that happen across the country every day, and make people think we were in a deadly drowning epidemic.
The news has decided to tell people about firearm related incidents anyplace in the nation as national news for some reason. Yet most other news is told only at the local level. That gives the impression that shootings are far more common than they are.
Lets take a look at the CDC numbers.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf
In 2004 there was 2,397,615 deaths in the United States.
29,569 were from firearm related injuries. These include criminals shot by the police, people shot in self defense, suicide by firearm, gang shootings etc
They accounted for 17.7 percent of all injury related deaths.
56.6% of those were suicides, and in 39.3% of them someone else pulled the trigger intentionaly.
Like I said, these are all deaths, including the "good" ones.
Males were killed by them at 6.6 times the rate of females.
Well 29,569 deaths averages out to a little over 81 deaths per day from firearms.
That means there was on average 81 news stories that could be plastered on television screens every day in 2004 across the nation, and even taking 20 seconds for each shooting story, you could fill an entire 30 min newscast (which are just rebroadcast throughout the day) as it would fill 27 minutes to cover them perfectly with no breaks, leaving just 3 minutes for commercials.
If they wanted to just cover the most horrible of the 81 per day, they could probably select the top 10, and cover them every day, and never need to use the same story another day of the year to make it appear we were in a killing epidemic across the nation.
So the truth is the news media has just decided to cover more shootings recently. The rate of shootings does not really vary that greatly.
I would venture some in charge "feel something should be done" and are deciding to set the stage by gradualy getting people tired of the "endless carnage".
Making someone else think they thought of the solution you want them to come up with is an old strategy, and it doesn't make them think your dictating to them.
They want people to reach the conclusion too many firearms are causing too many problems, and freedoms are still too great. The news does a lot of many people's thinking for them, and people think they came up with the results on thier own.
According to census data the population of the United States was estimated to be 293,655,404 on july 1 2004.
29,569 divided by 293,655,404 is about .0001
There was about a .01% chance you would die by a firearm in 2004 based on that, and that takes into consideration many people who kill themselves, or live lifestyles were violence is common. So your actual chance is even lower.
If we adjust for just homicides, both "good" self defense, etc and bad
We have about 11620 (39.3% of total deaths by firearms.) 11620 divided by 293,655,000 gives you .0000395 or about a .004% chance of death by firearm related homicide per person per year.
About .004% of people in the United States died of homicide by firearms in 2004, both "good" and bad shoots. Or about 31-32 a day.
Did you see 31 or 32 murders in the news per day then?
I repeat, the biggest change is the number of stories the news is deciding to cover, and they cover more firearm related incidents as national news than most others stories, which are only told localy.
The number covered in the news is not relevant to the number happening.
The main change is political agendas at various times, or a shown interest by viewers, which corrosponds with increased coverage for profit.
Then it wouldn't be homicide, suicide or related to a discharge.