These incidents happened in suburban Chicago, Washington state, central Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Idaho, Southern California and Baltimore, among other places.
“There is no question there has been a surge in violence, said Daniel Nagin, professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.”
So far this year, over 800 children and teens have been killed by guns, which includes homicides and suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Looking at CDC data, a report this month by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found 2021 set a record for the most deaths ever: 48,830 gun-related deaths.
One of the weekend´s shootings took place in Willowbrook, Illinois, where at least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a suburban Chicago parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities reported.
The DuPage County sheriff’s office described a “peaceful gathering” that suddenly turned violent as a number of people fired multiple shots into the crowd.
In Washington state, two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.
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