In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting following a local festival, police said on Tuesday. A man wearing a black ski mask and Kevlar body armor, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, began “randomly” massacring people, according to Philadelphia police. At least five people between the ages of 15 and 59 were killed, while two children, ages two and 13, suffered serious gunshot wounds.
In a separate mass shooting incident in Philadelphia on Monday evening, five people were killed and two were injured when a suspect in a bullet-proof vest opened fire on apparent strangers, according to local police. A toddler and a teenager were among the wounded.
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 an outdoor neighbourhood block party in Baltimore.
US President Joe Biden condemned the violence and renewed his calls to tighten America’s lax gun laws. Much more action is needed to “address the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our communities apart,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House. “Our nation has once again endured a wave of tragic and senseless shootings,” the president said on Tuesday.
Biden called on Republican lawmakers “to come to the table on meaningful, common sense reforms.” 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.
The motives in all three recent shootings were not immediately clear.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said her force had arrested a suspect, identified as a 40-year-old man who had an assault-style rifle among other weapons. She said at a late-night news conference that “we have absolutely no idea why this happened.” The city’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, told The New York Times on Tuesday that the killing spree “seems to bear the characteristics of a lot of random mass shootings that happen in the United States.” Police in Fort Worth said no arrests have been made in that shooting.
“We don’t know if this is domestic-related, if it is gang-related. It is too early to tell at this point,” said Shawn Murray, a senior police official.
Police have said they are seeking multiple suspects in the Baltimore shooting incident.
The latest shootings took place around the anniversary of last year’s Highland Park mass shooting near Chicago, where seven people were killed and 48 others wounded at an Independence Day parade. A 22-year-old man remains in custody after being indicted on 117 felony charges for the carnage.
US mass shootings near record in 2023
The United States has been struggling with a large number of mass shootings and incidents of gun violence. There have been over 340 mass shootings so far in 2023 in the country, 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.
At the pace of the first half of this year, mass shootings over the 2023 calendar year would reach 679 or about double the 336 recorded in 2018. That would mark the second-highest annual total over the last nine years, behind only the 690 recorded in 2021, according to the non-profit group.
The US has by far the most gun deaths per capita of any large high-income country, analysis from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation shows.
At a press conference Monday, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw confirmed that Carriker had multiple loaded magazines and a police scanner on his person. Outlaw said police had recovered over 50 shell casings spread over several blocks, with bullet holes still being discovered in cars and buildings. As of this writing, police have yet to advance a motive or release any evidence indicating that the shooter knew the victims.
At the same press conference, Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom said it appeared that Carriker was “shooting aimlessly” at people and vehicles. Once police arrived on the scene, Ransom said, Carriker ran into an alleyway, where he was taken into custody.
In an interview with local Philadelphia television station ABC6, Marie Merritt, mother of Lashyd, said her son was just stopping at the local store on Greenway Avenue to grab a snack when he was shot several times. Reflecting on losing the youngest of her five children, Marie said that Lashyd “was my number one prize and he knows that. I miss him so much.”
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Tina Rosette, 49, said she and her daughter, Ciannia, 24, lived with Carriker in 2021, and that while she had never seen Carriker with a gun, he did have “an aggressive approach to some things in life.” She said it appeared to her that he was in “a dark place.”
Unlike her mother, Ciannia did recall seeing Carriker with a handgun, which he showed her several times. Ciannia said she stopped talking to Carriker after she rejected his romantic advances. Both mother and daughter moved out of the residence about a year ago.
Monday’s massacre was just one of several horrific mass shootings in the United States during the days leading up to the annual Independence Day holiday on July 4. Just before midnight on Monday, 11 people were shot and three were killed in a parking lot in the Como neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas. The shooting occurred after an annual neighborhood gathering dubbed “Comofest” had ended.
Two of the deceased have been identified as Paul Willis, 18, and Cynthia Santos, 22. Speaking to FOX4, Kadesha Weatherly, Willis’ mother, said both of her sons were in the area of the shooting and that Paul was shot in the head.
Kadesha said her son was an aspiring electrician who had graduated from high school in Arlington and worked at a nearby McDonald’s. “They didn’t even let my baby make it to college,” Weatherly said. “I just want people to remember his name and not just an 18-year-old victim.”
At 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 2, gunmen opened fire on a block party in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Baltimore, Maryland. Two people were killed and 28 injured, with three in critical condition. The police say the two people killed were an 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man. Victims reportedly ranged from 21 to 34 years old. The shooting took place during an annual local celebration called “Brooklyn Day.” Police say the assault was the largest shooting incident in the city’s history.
While public mass shootings have, tragically, become almost commonplace in capitalist America, the phenomenon of a private mass “family annihilator,” that is, a close family member who commits a multiple murder-suicide, targeting spouses, children and close relatives, is also on the rise.
In St. Ann, Missouri, Monday night, a drunk 34-year-old Coleman McIlvain murdered his girlfriend and shot her three children, killing her 14-year-old son and her five-year-old son before turning the gun on himself, according to local police. The deceased woman’s nine-year-old daughter, who was shot in the hand, managed to escape and get help from neighbors.
St. Ann Police Chief Aaron Jimenez said the shooting happened at around 8 p.m. According to Jimenez, the couple began arguing after McIlvain’s girlfriend refused to allow him to drive her car drunk.
“The daughter then observed the boyfriend shoot her mom in the face and then had a fight or flight response,” Jimenez said, adding that “he fired approximately seven shots to try to kill her.”
A neighbor told KMOV News 4 that the couple frequently fought, but that yesterday was a “normal day” and McIlvain had been out in the yard earlier helping the children set up decorations for the Fourth of July.
Gwen Connelly recalled seeing the nine-year-old girl run up to her. “She had blood all over her,” Connelly said, “and I said, ‘are you hit anywhere else?’ She said, ‘I don’t think so,’ but she was drenched in blood, so she said, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), since July 3, that is, in the last 48 hours, at least 57 people have been shot to death, while over 110 have been injured in the US. Just over halfway through 2023, the GVA has recorded 348 mass shootings. The GVA defines a “mass shooting” as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed by gunshot.
If the current pace of carnage continues, 2023 will end with approximately 687 mass shootings, nearly two a day, just below the record 690 mass shootings recorded by the GVA in 2021, the most it has recorded since it began tracking in 2014.
In a perfunctory statement on the shootings issued Tuesday, President Joe Biden, after offering prayers, once again called on his fascistic “Republican colleagues” to “come to the table on meaningful, common sense” gun reform. Even were measures such as a ban on assault weapons to pass, they would do nothing to address the root causes of gun violence, which lie in the capitalist system and the conditions it produces.
In the land of inequality, workers are forced to labor in dangerous conditions for inadequate pay, while the media, entertainment industry and capitalist politicians venerate murderous police and military assassins. Any attempts by workers to better their social standing is either stifled by the trade union bureaucracies, or if that fails, outlawed by the government.
The US government’s subordination of the safety and well-being of workers and their families to corporate profit-making, most brutally expressed in the “herd immunity” pandemic policy that has led to over 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths in the US, illustrates the official indifference of the ruling elite to mass death.
