Global Courant
Mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Fort Worth, Texas claimed the lives of 10 people ahead of the July 4 holiday, officials said, a stark reminder of the United States’ decades-long failure to curb gun violence.
In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight injured in a mass shooting after a local festival, police said Tuesday.
In a separate mass shooting incident in Philadelphia on Monday night, local police said five people were killed and two injured when a suspect in a bulletproof vest opened fire at seemingly strangers. Among the injured are a toddler and a teenager.
The Monday night shootings came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at a Baltimore neighborhood party.
The motives in all three recent shootings were not immediately clear.
US President Joe Biden condemned the violence and reiterated his calls for America’s lax gun laws to be tightened.
It is within our power to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, demand safe storage, end weapons manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and enforce universal background checks.
I call on Congressional Republicans to make meaningful, common sense reforms.
“Our country has endured another wave of tragic and senseless shootings,” the president said in a statement Tuesday. Biden called on Republican lawmakers — who have generally blocked efforts to substantially reform gun safety laws and oppose Biden’s effort to reinstate a ban on assault weapons — “to get to the table for meaningful, common-sense reform.”
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said her police force had arrested a suspect identified as a 40-year-old man who had, among other things, an assault rifle, telling a late night press conference that “we have absolutely no idea why this is happened .”
Fort Worth police said no arrests have been made.
Bullet holes found in the side of a parked truck were marked in Philadelphia on Tuesday as police officers worked at the scene of a mass shooting the day before. (Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters)
“We don’t know if this is domestic or gang-related. It’s too early to say at this point,” said Shawn Murray, a senior police official.
Police have said they are looking for multiple suspects in the Baltimore shooting incident.
The latest shootings occurred around the anniversary of last year’s Highland Park mass shooting near Chicago, where seven people were shot dead and 48 others injured during an Independence Day parade. A 22-year-old man remains in custody after being charged with 117 crimes.
LOOK | Mass shootings a ‘uniquely American problem,’ Highland Park mayor says:
Mass shootings “a fairly unique American problem,” Highland Park mayor says
A day after a gunman opened fire in Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six people, Mayor Nancy Rotering says she received a handbook detailing what a mayor should do after a city experiences a mass shooting.
The United States has experienced a high number of mass shootings and gun violence incidents. According to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are shot, not counting the shooter, there have been more than 340 mass shootings in the country so far in 2023 so far.
At the rate of the first half of this year, there would be 679 mass shootings in calendar year 2023, or about double the 336 recorded in 2018. That would be the second-highest annual total for the past nine years, behind only the 690 recorded in 2021, according to data collected by the nonprofit that tracks shootings.
The United States has by far the most gun-related deaths per capita of all major high-income countries, according to an analysis by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Police arrive late Monday at the scene of a fatal shooting in Forth Worth, Texas. (WFAA/the associated press)
