Florida Woman Shot Husband In The Face On Christmas Eve: Police

A 55-year-old Florida woman is facing charges after she allegedly shot her husband in the face on Christmas Eve, according to authorities.

Kristi Lee McCaffery, of Panama City, was arrested in connection to the Saturday shooting, the city's police department announced in a statement.

Officers with the Panama City Police Department (PCPD) were responding to a residence in the 1600 block of West 10th Court that afternoon in reference to a shooting when they found McCaffery's husband with a gunshot wound to the face.

The victim was transported to a local hospital in serious condition, while McCaffery was apprehended over the incident.

She was charged with attempted first-degree murder and booked into the Bay County Jail, WMBB News 13 reported.

The PCPD has urged anyone with information regarding the case to contact the force at 850-872-3100. They can also report tips anonymously through the phone by downloading the PCPD's Tip411 app.

At least 16 people across the United States, including a 3-year-old Missouri girl, died over the Christmas weekend as a result of gun-related incidents, the New York Post reported.

Shootings were reported in states such as Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania and West Virginia between Friday night and early Monday, according to the outlet.

New York alone saw nine shootings in five of the city's boroughs, two of which were fatal.

"They may be celebrating Christmas, but it's still a weekend. There's alcohol involved and disputes and disagreements," a New York Police Department veteran told The Post.

"It always comes out with alcohol and that leads to fighting, shootings, everything. There's no break. There's no break in crime," they added.

There were more than 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the U.S. in 2020, according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The figure represented a 43% increase from 2010, the BBC reported.

Despite rising cases of gun-related deaths, calls for stricter gun laws among Americans have been dropping over the years, data showed.

Around 52% of Americans wanted stricter gun control in 2020 compared to 67% three years prior, polling by analytics firm Gallup found.

President Joe Biden said earlier this month that it was still possible for assault-style weapons such as those based around the AR-15 platform to be banned before his party loses control of Congress in January.

"We did it before. We did it, and guess what? It worked... We can do it again," Biden said during a vigil for victims of gun violence in Washington.

Biden sponsored and supported the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which prohibited the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms and large-capacity magazines until the law's expiration in 2004.

There is "inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings," a RAND Corporation review of gun studies that was updated in 2020 concluded.

However, a study published in 2019 found that the number of people killed and injured during mass public shootings has increased over the last decade after the ban expired.