DENVER (Colorado), Dec 28: A gunman on a deadly shooting rampage in Denver left five people dead and several others injured on Monday evening. He went on his shooting spree from South Broadway, the city centre, to the suburb of Lakewood, eight km away, where finally he was shot dead by a police officer in an encounter. Police said he was targeting some people with whom he had business dealings.

The shooter was identified as Lyndon James McLeod, 47, who had a business in Denver earlier called Flat Black Ink Corp. The first shootings took place at tattoo shops near this address in which three people died. It is a busy street lined with shops, bars and restaurants. He even entered homes and targeted people. And he was moving around in a vehicle and shooting. Police said he had been facing investigations in previous cases.

This was the 13th mass shooting in Colorado this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). In the whole of the US, there have been nearly 700 mass shootings in the year. Shootings on school campuses have also been steadily rising in recent years. On December 1, a 15-year-old killed four fellow students and injured seven others, including a teacher, in a high school shooting in Michigan. There has been an alarming rise in mass shootings in the US in the last few years, causing global concerns.

There were 4,77,289 incidents of deaths from gun violence during 1999-2014, for which data is available. According to the GVA, which catalogs every incident of gun violence in the US and maintains a database of data gleaned from several thousands of sources, a mass shooting is defined as a shooting that injures or kills four or more people, apart from the shooter. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution allows the citizen the right to keep and bear arms.