© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A police officer passes a child’s bicycle after a mass shooting at the scene of a Fourth of July holiday weekend block party in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. July 2, 2023 in a still image from video. REUTERS/Stringr/File Photo
By Kanishka Singh and Raphael Satter
(Reuters) -Mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Fort Worth, Texas, killed 10 people and wounded nearly 40 others ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, officials said, a grim reminder of the decades-long failure to curb gun violence in the United States.
In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting following a local festival to mark the U.S. Independence Day holiday, police said on Tuesday.
In a separate mass shooting incident 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 shot in the legs, when a suspect in body armor and armed with an AR-15 opened fire on apparent 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 an outdoor neighborhood block party in Baltimore.
The motives in all three recent shootings remained unclear.
U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the violence and renewed his calls to tighten America’s lax gun laws.
“Our nation has once again endured a wave of tragic and senseless shootings,” the president said in a statement released on Tuesday. Biden called 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.
Philadelphia officials pleaded with state and federal lawmakers to act.
“We are begging Congress to protect lives and do something about America’s gun problem,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney told a news conference.
The city’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, asked Philadelphia state lawmakers for “reasonable legislation” of the type found in neighboring New Jersey and Delaware.
“Some of that legislation might have made a difference here,” Krasner told the same briefing.
Philadelphia police said the suspect was a 40-year-old man who had an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 9 mm pistol who wore body armor and a ski mask.
The dead ranged in age from 15 to 59.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw told reporters the shooter acted “knowingly and intentionally,” and Krasner vowed to present multiple charges of murder and other offenses at the shooter’s first court hearing on Wednesday.
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.
Meanwhile in Baltimore, police have said they are seeking multiple suspects.
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.
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.