After Uvalde, holiday weekend sees shootings nationwide
Even as the nation reeled over the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, multiple mass shootings happened elsewhere over the Memorial Day weekend in areas both rural and urban. Still, single-death incidents accounted for most gun fatalities.
Gunfire erupted in the predawn hours of Sunday at a festival in the town of Taft, Oklahoma, sending hundreds of revelers scattering and customers inside the nearby Boots Café diving for cover. Eight people ages 9 to 56 were shot, and one of them died.
Six children ages 13 to 15 were wounded Saturday night in a touristy quarter of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two groups got into an altercation, and two people in one of them pulled guns and started shooting.
And at a club and liquor store in Benton Harbor in southwestern Michigan, a 19-year-old man was killed and six other people were wounded after gunfire rang out among a crowd around 2:30 a.m. Monday. Police found multiple shell casings of various calibers.
Those and others met a common definition of a mass shooting, in which four or more people are shot. Such occurrences have become so regular, news of them is likely to fade fast.
There were at least two incidents in Chicago between late Friday and Monday that qualified as mass shootings, including one near a closed elementary school on the West Side in which the wounded included a 16-year-old girl.
Single-fatality shootings also rocked families and communities: On the South Side, the body of a young man slain at an outdoor birthday party lay on the sidewalk early Sunday, covered by a white sheet.
His mother stood nearby, crying.
Overall, Chicago recorded 32 gunfire incidents over the weekend in which 47 people were shot and nine died.
In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, by an 18-year-old who legally purchased an Arstyle rifle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican opponents of tougher gun laws quickly pointed at Chicago as an example of how such measures don’t work, saying, “more people are shot every weekend (there) than there are in schools in Texas.”
In Detroit, Police Chief James White promised to strictly enforce a curfew aimed at youths and teens after three people were wounded during a shooting earlier this month in Greektown, a popular downtown restaurant and entertainment district.
Such strategies may have worked in individual cases, but statistics from several cities didn’t indicate violence was kept at or below levels from previous years. Chicago’s Memorial Day weekend death toll was three times last year’s.
It’s long been a rule of thumb in northern cities that hot weather means more violence. Temperatures in Detroit and Chicago were in the 80s — unseasonably warm — during the three-day weekend, bringing more people outside and increasing the chances of clashes, often between rival gangs. Alcohol at holiday parties can fuel personal beefs, some of which first fester online.
Residents like Yvonne Fields, of Detroit, say they are especially cautious when Memorial Day rolls around. She, her children and grandchildren spent time closer to home this weekend.
“The holidays are not like they used to be,” Fields said. “The gangs have taken over. They do drive-by shootings. Everyone is living in fear.”