Ten people were killed and 38 wounded in mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Fort Worth ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, officials said, prompting a fresh call from President Joe Biden to pass gun control legislation.
In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting after a local festival to mark the U.S. Independence Day holiday, police said on Tuesday.
In a separate mass shooting in Philadelphia on Monday evening, five people were killed and two were wounded, including a 2-year-old boy and 13-year-old boy, both of whom were shot in the legs, when a suspect in body armor and armed with an AR-15 opened fire on strangers, according to local police.
The Monday night shootings came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at a neighborhood block party in Baltimore.
The motives in all three recent shootings remained unclear.
The United States is struggling with a large number of mass shootings and incidents of gun violence.
There have been over 340 mass shootings in the country so far in 2023, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Biden condemned the violence on Tuesday and renewed his calls to tighten America’s gun laws.
“Our nation has once again endured a wave of tragic and senseless shootings,” Biden said in a statement as quoted by Reuters, calling on Republican lawmakers “to come to the table on meaningful, commonsense reforms.”
Citing constitutional protections for gun ownership, Republicans in Congress have generally blocked attempts to significantly reform gun safety laws and oppose Biden’s push to reinstate a ban on assault weapons.
