Matt Bush, FISM News
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), there were at least 15 mass shootings leaving at least 18 dead and at least 58 injured over Labor Day weekend.
The mass shootings took place from Friday to Monday across America’s Democrat-run cities, including shootings in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Charleston, Birmingham, and Chicago. The deadliest of the mass shootings took place in St. Paul, Minnesota killing three and injuring two more, while the shooting in Cleveland injured 10 people.
The FBI does not have an official definition of a “mass shooting” event. However, GVA defines a mass shooting as “four or more people … shot or killed in a single incident, not including the shooter. That incident is categorized as a mass shooting based purely on that numerical threshold.”
Aside from the events that met GVA’s definition of a shooting, Newsweek reported that there were 323 total shootings across America over the holiday weekend, 46 of which happened in Chicago alone.
In just the past 72 hours, Chicago and Philadelphia have seen at least 18 deaths involving guns, and according to Fox News, the Chicago police department is investigating eight homicides.
The bottom line is that any gun control action taken by the Biden administration has not worked. Calls to defund the police and to work on community engagement rather than active policing have also not worked.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat elected in 2015, spoke of how any special event or holiday seems to result in an uptick in violence at a recent press conference.
I don’t enjoy the Fourth of July, I don’t enjoy the Democratic National Convention, I didn’t enjoy the NFL draft — I’m waiting for something bad to happen all the time. So I’ll be happy when I’m not here — when I’m not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff.
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the city is 1,300 officers short of its targeted staffing level, and the city’s police chief believes that up to 800 additional officers could leave the force in the next four years.
In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, another Democratic leader of a crime-engulfed city, pledged to slash $80 million from the city’s police budget after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. She then increased Chicago’s police budget in 2022 and asked for help from the DEA after the negative effects of the police budget cuts hit home.
Lightfoot has been characterized as anti-police from many within the Chicago PD ranks.
As previously reported by FISM, The Chicago mayor threatened to fire law enforcement personnel who defied the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in 2021 — which would have amounted to roughly 35% of the force — before a judge blocked the mandate’s enforcement. The threat resulted in a contentious public feud between Lightfoot and Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara and contributed to multiple resignations and early retirements within the force.
As of August 28, there were 364 homicides and 2,440 shootings in Chicago just since January 1 of this year. There were 562 people killed by gun violence in 2021. Mayor Lightfoot’s website has an entire page devoted to the police reform work she has done since taking office. However, nothing on that page speaks of the increased gun violence and crime in the city.
Mass shootings and other gun violence issues have been at the forefront of the news cycle recently, causing many Democratic and progressive leaders to push for greater gun control laws and more police oversight.
Notably, three of the cities that had mass shootings over the weekend — Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia — also have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Other Democrat-run cities with strict gun laws, such as San Fransisco and Baltimore, have also seen increased violence and crime this year.