Independence Day weekend is almost always the time of year when gun violence kills or injures the most people. This year, there were fewer people shot than in any year since 2019, reports The Trace. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 245 people were injured or killed in shootings on the holiday, a 20 percent decrease from last year and a 46 percent decrease from the height of the pandemic in 2020. Still, a shooting at a block party in Detroit left two people dead and more than a dozen wounded, capping a violent holiday weekend that also saw mass shootings in Kentucky and Chicago, the Associated Press reports. More than 100 people were shot in Chicago, 19 of them fatally, over the long weekend. A shooting on Thursday in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, left two women and an 8-year-old boy dead. Two other children were also critically injured. “We cannot take our eyes off the ball,” said Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling. “We cannot stop thinking about the people who have been victimized by this crime.” City officials opened an emergency resource center for people struggling with trauma, while Mayor Brandon Johnson blamed the pervasive violence on years of disinvestment and poverty, particularly in Black neighborhoods. Johnson said Chicago has not received enough federal resources for victims. He has renewed a request for help.
The four-day weekend in Chicago saw a spike in violence compared with the same time period last year when 11 people were killed and more than 60 wounded. The Detroit shooting took place at an illegal block party on the city’s east side that was attended by more than 300 people, said Police Chief James White. Nine weapons and more than 100 shell casings were found at the shooting scene, White said. Fifteen young women and six young men were shot and two of them died — a 20-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, he said. “You’ve got a multitude of people that are engaged in this behavior. This isn’t one suspect, one group being targeted. This is a group of people who are essentially engaged in a shootout,” White said.