Stretch of Mass Shootings Occur Nationwide Over Weekend
A violent string of mass shootings killed at least 10 people and left another 50 injured in nine separate incidents across six states between Friday and Sunday this past weekend.
Mass shootings are typically defined as incidents in which four or more individuals are shot with a firearm. The Congressional Research Service adopted this definition in an April 2013 report on the issue.
Four mass shootings across four states occurred on Friday, June 11, alone, according to the nonprofit research group “Gun Violence Archive.” Shootings in Texas, Georgia, Washington state and North Carolina collectively left four dead and 17 injured last Friday.
Two individuals remain in critical condition and one victim has died following a mass shooting in a Savannah, Ga., neighborhood in which seven total victims sustained injuries. Savannah police Chief Roy Minter said preliminary information has led law enforcement to conclude the shooting stemmed from a conflict between two groups.
That same day, a shootout in Seattle left two men dead and two more hospitalized with one victim in critical condition. Another pair of shootings then occurred in Winston-Salem, N.C., leaving two dead and at least five injured. Two firearms were recovered at the scene, but no arrests have been made and law enforcement officials are still trying to determine if the shootings are connected.
Saturday, June 12, marked the fifth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that left 50 people dead and 58 injured. The Pulse shooting was the deadliest attack in the United States since the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, and was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history until the Las Vegas shooting the following year.
Later, Dallas police responded to a shooting that left five injured, including a four-year-old victim. Another shooting occurred hours later in downtown Austin early Saturday morning when 13 people were injured and one killed by two gunmen, one of whom remains at large.
More shootings followed on Saturday evening in Ohio, first in Cleveland then in Cincinnati, killing three people and injuring eight combined. Three separate shootings across Cleveland happened in the early morning hours, killing three and injuring four. No arrests have been made in either of the Ohio weekend shootings as of Monday morning.
Hours later, one person was killed and nine injured after two gunmen opened fire on Chicago’s south side. The gunmen responsible for the attack in Chicago also remain at large as police continue their investigation.
But the weekend bloodshed had not yet subsided as one person was killed and three injured after an overnight shooting on Sunday in Louisville, Ky. No arrests have been made in this case and the police investigation is still active.
In a continuance of the disturbing trend, police in West Salem, Ohio, are still investigating an incident in which one person was killed and five were injured in the parking lot of a local race track. By the end of Sunday, the country’s mass shooting total had reached 272 separate incidents in 164 days this year.
TWN reported in 2018 that the country was averaging about one mass shooting incident every day. In 2020 alone, 610 mass shootings occurred nationwide, a figure that the country is on pace to surpass this year as citizens slowly return to normal lifestyles in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.l
