CHICAGO (AP) – Although the nation was rocked by the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, there were several mass shootings elsewhere during Memorial Day weekend. in rural and urban areas. Incidents of a single death still accounted for the majority of gun deaths.
Shots exploded in the hours before Sunday morning at a festival in Taft, Oklahoma, sending hundreds of partygoers and customers inside the nearby Boots Café to dive to protect themselves. . Eight people between the ages of 9 and 56 were shot dead and one of them died.
Six children between the ages of 13 and 15 were injured Saturday night in a tourist resort in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two groups got into an altercation, and two people from one of them pulled out their weapons and started firing.
Ten people were injured and three law enforcement officers were injured in a shooting at a rally on Memorial Day Street in Charleston, South Carolina.
And at a club and liquor store in Benton Harbor, southwest Michigan, a 19-year-old man was killed and six others were injured after gunfire erupted in a crowd around 2:30 p.m. Monday morning. Police found several shell casings of various calibers.
These and others met a common definition of mass shooting, in which four or more people were shot. These facts have become so regular that the news is likely to fade quickly.
There were at least two incidents in Chicago between Friday night and Monday that were described as mass shootings, including one near a closed elementary school on the West Side in which a 16-year-old girl was among the injured.
Single-digit shootings also shook families and communities.
In Arkansas, a 7-year-old girl was killed Saturday in a crowded area near Little Rock Zoo, in what police described as “an isolated incident involving acquaintances.”
And on the South Side of Chicago, the body of a young man murdered at an outdoor birthday party was on the sidewalk early Sunday morning, covered by a white sheet. Her mother stood nearby, crying.
In all, Chicago recorded 32 shooting incidents over the weekend in which 47 people were shot and nine were killed.
Following the shooting of Uvalde by an 18-year-old man who legally bought an AR-style rifle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican opponents of tougher gun laws quickly pointed to Chicago as an example of how these measures do not work. It works, saying, “More people are being shot every weekend (there) than in Texas schools.”
The high rates of armed violence in Chicago have made a number of Democratic governments there, including current mayor Lori Lightfoot, vulnerable to criticism, sometimes from their own party.
But the statements by Abbott and others are misleading and oversimplify the situation in the country’s third largest city. Many of the weapons used in the murder of Chicago residents were initially bought in other states with less stringent gun laws, such as Indiana and Mississippi. Chicago officials also point out that the city has fewer killings per capita than many other smaller cities in the United States.
Police chiefs there and other cities canceled holiday days to increase the number of officers during the holidays, in the hope that it would act as a deterrent. Independent conflict mediators also took to the streets, using social media to identify slow-fire conflicts with the potential to erupt into real-world violence.
In Detroit, Police Chief James White has vowed to enforce a curfew aimed at youth and teens after three people were injured in a shooting earlier this month in Greektown, a popular downtown restaurant and entertainment district. .
These strategies may have worked in individual cases, but statistics from several cities did not indicate that violence remained at or below previous levels. The death toll from Chicago Memorial Day weekend was three times higher than last year.
It has long been a general rule in northern cities that heat means more violence. Temperatures in Detroit and Chicago were in the 1980s, unusually warm, over the three-day weekend, which brought more people out and increased the chances of clashes, often between rival gangs. Alcohol at holiday parties can feed personal meats, some of which are first produced online.
“Seasons may not have a big impact on shootings in Los Angeles, where the weather is always good,” said Rodney Phillips, a violence prevention worker and former member of a gang in Chicago. But in his hometown, Memorial Day weekend usually marks “the start of the slaughter season,” he said.
Residents like Yvonne Fields of Detroit say they are especially cautious as Memorial Day approaches. She, her children and grandchildren spent some time closer to home this weekend.
“Holidays aren’t like before,” Fields said. “The gangs have taken over. They do drive-by shootings. Everyone lives in fear. ”
Large city police often say most homicides have some connection to gangs, while others point to poverty and despair as underlying causes.
Organizational change over the past three decades has also contributed to the violence, from top-down gangs led by identifiable leaders who could assert control to more fragmented and unstructured groups.
“These gang factions are getting younger, bolder and more impulsive,” Phillips said. “It simply came to our notice then. They are often children shooting children these days.
Malik Shabazz, who helps lead neighborhood security and crime patrols in Detroit, said the New Black Panther Nation / New Marcus Garvey movement he founded seeks to increase crime during the holidays when people gather in groups and has more free time away from work.
“What I’m seeing is that both criminals and victims of (violent shootings and crimes) are getting younger, and crime is becoming more and more heinous,” said Shabazz, 59. “And people carry their weapons and people have meat for nothing.” now I can shoot you and I can stab you for respect, not talk about it or ignore it and let it go. ”
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Williams reported from Detroit and Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed.