Americans across the country had big July Fourth celebrations this year, in part to make up for missing out last year. But amid all the revelry there was also a lot of tragedy as at least 150 people were killed by gun violence across the country throughout the weekend, reports CNN, citing data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive. From Friday through Sunday there were more than 400 shootings across the United States, according to the data that is still being updated and could very well increase.
The numbers come at a time when cities are struggling to deal with a rise in gun violence. New York is one of those cities and saw 21 shootings from Friday through Sunday, which actually was a decrease from the 25 shootings last year. In Chicago, 92 people were shot, 16 of them fatally, over what was the most violent weekend of the year, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
Other notable shootings from the weekend include a mass shooting near a car wash in Fort Worth, Texas that put eight people in the hospital early Sunday morning. A local witness described how he thought the gun shots were fireworks at first. “But I kept hearing it and it was going rapid. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. So I was like, ‘No, that’s something more than fireworks,’” the witness said. In Norfolk, Virginia four children, including a six-year-old girl, were shot on Friday afternoon. And on Saturday, golf pro Gene Siller was fatally shot at the country club where he worked in suburban Atlanta. When police arrived they found two other gunshot victims on a pickup truck that was left on the country club’s golf course.
On July 1, the United States reached more than 10,000 fatal shootings in 2021. Last year, that number wasn’t reached until July 27, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In all, there have been at least 336 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, the same number as was recorded in all of 2018.
