CHICAGO (AP) – Even when the nation was rocked by the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at a primary school in Uwalde, Texas, numerous mass shootings took place elsewhere on Remembrance Day weekend in both rural and urban areas. Single deaths still account for the majority of gun deaths.
A shooting erupted earlier Sunday morning at a festival in Taft, Oklahoma, sending hundreds of revelers to disperse and customers at a nearby Boots Cafe to dive for cover. Eight people between the ages of 9 and 56 were shot dead, one of them dead.
Six children between the ages of 13 and 15 were injured Saturday night in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two groups clashed, with two men in one pulling out pistols and firing.
Ten people were injured and three were injured in a shooting at a Memorial Day night street rally in Charleston, South Carolina.
And at a club and liquor store in Benton Harbor in southwestern Michigan, a 19-year-old man was killed and six others were injured after a shooting in the crowd around 2:30 a.m. Monday. Police found many shell casings of various calibers.
These and others met the generally accepted definition of a mass shooting in which four or more people were shot. Such events have become so regular that news about them is likely to fade quickly.
There were at least two incidents in Chicago between late Friday and Monday that qualified as mass shootings, including one near a closed primary school on the West Side, in which the injured included a 16-year-old girl.
Shooting with a single death also shook families and communities.
In Arkansas, a 7-year-old girl was killed Saturday in a busy area near the Little Rock Zoo, in what police described as an “isolated event involving acquaintances.”
And in southern Chicago, the body of a young man killed at an open-air birthday party lay on the sidewalk early Sunday, covered with a white sheet. His mother was standing nearby, crying.
In all, Chicago recorded 32 weekend shooting incidents, in which 47 people were shot and nine killed.
After the shooting of Uwalde, an 18-year-old who legally bought an AR-style rifle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican opponents of tougher gun laws quickly cited Chicago as an example of how such measures work, saying: “More people are shot every weekend (there) than there are in Texas schools.”
The high levels of gun violence in Chicago have made a number of democratic governments there, including incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, vulnerable to criticism – sometimes from their own party.
But Abbott and others’ claims are misleading and oversimplify the situation in the country’s third-largest city. Many of the weapons used to kill Chicagoans were originally purchased in other states with less stringent gun laws, such as Indiana and Mississippi. Chicago officials also note that the city has fewer homicides per capita than many other smaller cities in the United States.
Police chiefs there and in other cities have canceled weekends to increase the number of employees during the holiday, hoping this will act as a deterrent. Independent conflict mediators are also taking to the streets, using social media to identify boiling conflicts with the potential to erupt into violence in the real world.
In Detroit, Police Chief James White has vigorously promised to impose curfews on youth and teenagers after three people were injured in a shooting earlier this month in Garktown, a popular restaurant and entertainment district in the city center.
Such strategies may have worked in individual cases, but statistics from several cities do not show that violence has been maintained at or below previous years. The number of victims on Remembrance Day in Chicago over the weekend was three times more than last year.
It has long been a rule in northern cities that hot weather means more violence. Temperatures in Detroit and Chicago were in the ’80s – unusually warm – over the three-day weekend, taking more people outside and increasing the chances of clashes, often between rival gangs. Alcohol during holiday parties can feed personal cattle, some of which first fester online.
“The seasons may not have a big impact on the shootings in Los Angeles, where the weather is always good,” said Rodney Phillips, a violence prevention officer and former gang member in Chicago. But in his hometown, Remembrance Day weekend usually marks “the beginning of the murder season,” he said.
Residents like Yvonne Fields in Detroit say they are especially careful when Remembrance Day comes. She, her children and grandchildren spent time closer to home this weekend.
“The holidays are not like before,” Fields said. “The gangs have taken power. They shoot a car. Everyone lives in fear. ”
Police in big cities often say most murders have something to do with gangs, although others cite the poverty and despair that come with it as the main causes.
Organizational change over the past three decades, from top-down gangs led by identified leaders who could assert control, to more fragmented, poorly structured groups, has also contributed to the violence.
“These gangs are getting younger and younger, bolder and more impulsive,” Phillips said. “It’s alarming. Nowadays, children often shoot at children.
Malik Shabaz, who helps run neighborhood security patrols and anti-crime patrols in Detroit, said he founded the new nation of the Black Panther in Detroit / New Movement, Marcus Garvey, looking for peaks in crime during the holidays. people gather in groups and have more free time away from work.
“What I see is that both criminals and victims of (shootings and violent crimes) are getting younger and younger, and the crime is getting more disgusting,” said Shabaz, 59. “And people carry their weapons and people have beef, now I can shoot you and I can stab you for respect, not talk about it or ignore it and leave.”
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Williams reported from Detroit and Jill Blade in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed.
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