Time magazine’s latest cover reads ‘Enough’ in bold capital letters, above the smaller print ‘A year of gun violence in America. So far’.
A collage of 253 US cities adorn the cover, each the location of a mass shooting this year, tallied by the Gun Violence Archive.
The edition comes just days after two mass shootings in the space of 24 hours, in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio in August.
Artist John Mavroudis, based in San Francisco told CNN it was “a frightening portrait of a country drowning in gun violence”.
Mr Mavroudis, known for his cover of Christine Blasey Ford said: "At a certain point, I started stepping back and thinking about the actual cities that I'm writing."
"I came across my hometown San Jose, California, and that stopped me in my tracks," he said.
"If you start looking a little closer at the details, you realise that every single one of these names represents actual incidents."
"And actual incidents represent real people, and every single gun death doesn't affect just that person. It affects their family and friends."
People participate in an anti-gun violence protest at Lafayette Square in Washington, DC. Source: EPA
On social media, Time’s tweet stirred up debate.
Many were in support.
Others felt differently.
Lack of political will
Editor-in-chief and CEO of Time, Edward Felsenthal, said: "I thought about the hundreds of images from mass shootings we’ve published over the years."
"What seemed to me to travel the farthest and speak the loudest were not pictures, but numbers. Numbers showed how tragically exceptional American is in its gun violence," he said.
In a Time article about the cover, the editor criticised culture that allowed easy access to guns.
"We do have a choice as a society. Not a perfect choice. Or a guaranteed solution. But doing nothing in the face of repeated mass murder in our society is indefensible," he said.
"More than 250 mass shootings in the first 220 days of 2019 alone, it’s hard to believe that this doesn’t go without saying. Enough’."
