A Memorial Day festival in Oklahoma. A house party in Philadelphia. A graduation celebration in Alabama.
As Americans came together for the holiday weekend, the drumbeat of gun violence continued to shatter peace across the country.
While the shocking and deadly mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York were topics of conversation for many people at beach and backyard gatherings over the long weekend, hundreds of smaller shootings nationwide ended lives, injured bodies, and left families reeling.
In just a 72-hour span over Memorial Day weekend, there were more than 300 shooting incidents across the US, according to data tabulated by the Gun Violence Archive. More than 130 people were killed, including a 16-year-old girl and 21-year-old woman shot dead around 1 a.m. on Monday at a holiday party in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood.
Many of the other shootings injured just one person. But some, like the gunfire that erupted on an interstate in southeast Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, wounded as many as seven.
“Mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg in this country’s gun violence crisis,” Melody McFadden, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action volunteer and member of Everytown’s Veterans Advisory Council, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s important to recognize that people are dying every single day from gun violence that doesn’t make national headlines.”
The murder of 19 children and two adults in their Texas classrooms last week caused widespread horror and opened the door for the first time in years to the prospect — however slim — of federal action on guns. But it has also put the country on edge.
In Florida, a 10-year-old boy in fifth grade was arrested, charged, and marched before a camera for allegedly sending a text message about a planned shooting at his school in Cape Coral. Sheriff Carmine Marceno said in a statement shared to Facebook that the boy’s behavior was “sickening” in light of the Uvalde tragedy. “Right now is not the time to act like a little delinquent. It’s not funny,” Marceno said. “This child made a fake threat, and now he’s experiencing real consequences.”
Anti-gun violence advocates say they feel hopeful the fraught national mood may translate into political action, but they’re urging Americans and the media to be mindful of the violence that occurs in between the headline-grabbing mass shootings.
“These high-profile moments should clarify us and they should energize us to take action,” March For Our Lives spokesperson Noah Lumbantobing told BuzzFeed News, “but they should not be the only moments in which we’re paying attention, in which we’re calling our legislators to take action, when we’re marching in the streets and showing up.”
“We need to be paying attention and taking action 365 days a year in order for this to end,” Lumbantobing said. “Otherwise we’ll be right back here the next time and kids will continue to suffer, people will continue to suffer, and communities will continue to suffer.”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/memorial-day-weekend-shootings-and-gun-violence-soar