Mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Fort Worth, Texas, claimed the lives of 10 people ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, officials said, a grim reminder of the United States’ decades-long failure to curb gun-fueled violence.
In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting following a local festival, police said on Tuesday.
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 neighborhood block party in Baltimore.
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 – who have generally blocked attempts to significantly reform gun safety laws and oppose Biden’s push to reinstate a ban on assault weapons – “to come to the table on meaningful, commonsense reforms.”
The motives in all three recent shootings weren’t immediately clear.