Update 4 Jul 2022: Mass shooting on US Independence Day
The event in the city of Highland Park, Illinois, was suddenly halted shortly after 10:00 local time (15:00 GMT), when several shots were heard. Twenty-four people were taken to hospital, officials say. A suspect has been named as Robert E Crimo III, 22. Police said he is considered armed and dangerous. Police said the suspect appeared to have targeted the parade's attendees at random with a high-powered rifle. The suspected gunman opened fire at the parade at around 10:15 local time, just a few minutes after it began.
The event was scheduled to include floats, marching bands, and community entertainment as part of the city's Independence Day celebrations. But what should have been one of the happiest days of the year quickly turned to panic, with pushchairs, purses and lawn chairs left discarded on the street as crowds fled from the scene. The suspect is believed to have fired at members of the public from the rooftop of a nearby shop, where police say they recovered "evidence of a firearm."
Five adults were killed at the scene, as well as a further victim who the local coroner said died in a nearby hospital. "On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we're instead mourning the tragic loss of life," said city mayor Nancy Rotering. The Fourth of July is a national holiday marking the date the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Gunman kills four in Oklahoma medical centre
The assailant apparently died of a self-inflicted wound, said Tulsa deputy police chief Jonathan Brooks. PHOTO: TULSA POLICE DEPARTMENT/FACEBOOK
A man armed with a rifle and handgun killed four people inside a medical building in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday (June 1) before fatally shooting himself, police said, in the latest of a series of mass shootings to rattle the United States.
Police arrived at the St. Francis Hospital three minutes after receiving a call about the shooting on Wednesday afternoon and followed the sound of gunfire up to the Natalie Building’s second floor, Tulsa deputy police chief Jonathan Brooks told reporters. The officers made contact with the victims and the suspect five minutes later, Mr Brooks said.
Police responses have come under increased scrutiny after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in a Texas school classroom last week while officers waited outside for nearly an hour. Wednesday’s incident in Tulsa is the latest in a series of mass shootings that have shocked Americans and reignited debates about gun control. Two weeks before the Uvalde shooting, a white gunman killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighbourhood in Buffalo, New York.
Tulsa shooting is the nation's 233rd mass shooting in 2022, per Gun Violence Archive
There have so far been at least 233 mass shootings in 2022, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive — including today's shooting in Tulsa.
June 1 was the 152nd day of the year. This means there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in 2022.
CNN and the GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
Texas school shooting: Teenage gunman kills 19 children, 2 teachers in latest US mass murder
Emergency personnel gather near Robb Elementary School following a shooting, on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo: AP/Dario Lopez-Mills)
A teenage gunman murdered at least 19 children and two teachers after storming into a Texas elementary school on Tuesday (May 24), the latest bout of gun-fueled mass murder in the United States and the nation's worst school shooting in nearly a decade.
The carnage began with the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shooting his own grandmother, who survived, authorities said. He fled that scene and crashed his car near the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 130km west of San Antonio. There he launched a bloody rampage that ended when he was killed, apparently shot by police.
The motive was not immediately clear. Law enforcement officers saw the gunman, clad in body armour, emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and "engaged" the suspect, who nevertheless managed to charge into the school and open fire, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN.
A mass shooting 10 days earlier claimed 10 lives in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old who they said had traveled hundreds of miles to Buffalo and opened fire with an assault-style rifle at a grocery store.
18 children and a teacher killed in massacre at Texas elementary school
Law enforcement outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed at least 18 children and a teacher on May 24, 2022. (Christopher Lee/The New York Times)
A gunman killed at least 18 children and a teacher on Tuesday in a rural Texas elementary school, officials said, in the deadliest American elementary school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.
The slayings took place just before noon at Robb Elementary School, where second through fourth graders in Uvalde, a small city west of San Antonio, were preparing to start summer break this week. “He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly,” Governor Greg Abbott said in a news conference.
As terrified parents in Uvalde late Tuesday waited for word of their children’s safety and law enforcement officials raced to piece together how the massacre had transpired, the mass shooting was reopening national political debate over gun laws and the prevalence of weapons. Ten days earlier, a gunman fatally shot 10 people inside a Buffalo, New York, grocery store.
10 killed in 'racially motivated' shooting at US grocery store
Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. (Photo: Getty Images/AFP John Normile)
A heavily armed 18-year-old man shot 10 people dead on Saturday (May 14) at a Buffalo, New York grocery store in a "racially motivated" attack that he live-streamed on camera, authorities said.
The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo's police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said.
Among those killed inside the store was a retired police officer working as an armed security guard. The guard "engaged the suspect, fired multiple shots," but the gunman shot him, Gramaglia said. When police arrived, the shooter put the gun to his neck, but was talked down and surrendered, he added.
Gunman kills 10 in racially motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket
A man is detained following a mass shooting in the parking lot of TOPS supermarket, in a still image from a social media video in Buffalo, New York, U.S. May 14, 2022. (Reuters)
An 18-year-old white gunman shot 10 people to death and wounded three others at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, before surrendering after what authorities called an act of “racially motivated violent extremism.”
Authorities said the suspect, who was armed with an assault-style rifle and appeared to have acted alone, drove to Buffalo from his home in a New York county “hours away” to launch a Saturday afternoon attack that he broadcast on the internet.
Eleven of the 13 people struck by gunfire were Black, officials said. The two others were white. The racial breakdown of the dead was not made clear. The suspect, who was not immediately named by police, was heavily armed and dressed in tactical gear, including body armor, police said.
Gun violence in the United States
Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually. Guns were the leading cause of death for children in 2020. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available as of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reports 38,390 deaths by firearm, of which 24,432 were by suicide. The rate of firearm deaths per 100,000 people rose from 10.3 per 100,000 in 1999 to 12 per 100,000 in 2017, with 109 people dying per day or about 14,542 homicides in total, being 11.9 per 100,000 in 2018. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm. In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm.
About 1.4 million people have died from firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011. This number includes all deaths resulting from a firearm, including suicides, homicides, and accidents. Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, among those 22 nations studied, the U.S. had 82 percent of gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns, with guns being the leading cause of death for children. The ownership and regulation of guns are among the most widely debated issues in the country.
African American populations in the United States experience high amounts of firearms injury and homicide. Although mass shootings are covered extensively in the media, mass shootings in the United States account for only a small fraction of gun-related deaths. Regardless, mass shootings occur on a larger scale and much more frequently than in other developed countries. School shootings are described as a "uniquely American crisis", according to The Washington Post in 2018. Children at U.S. schools have active shooter drills. According to USA Today, in 2019 "about 95% of public schools now have students and teachers practice huddling in silence, hiding from an imaginary gunman."
