A high school football team captain signed to play college ball, and a high school basketball player are two of the three people who were shot and killed at a shooting in Austin, Texas Sunday. Austin was one of five major shootings this weekend. Columbus, Ohio, LaPlace and Shreveport, Louisiana, and Kenosha, Wisconsin had mass shootings over the weekend, following a horrific mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis, Indiana that left eight dead and seven wounded.
In Austin the suspect is “a former Travis County Sheriff’s Office detective who was charged with sexual assault of a child,” CNN reports.
Five mourners, including a 12-year old child, at a Columbus, Ohio vigil commemorating the murder of a man one year earlier were shot. One woman driving by the scene was shot in the head. She died.
Also Sunday, a Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter killed three people and injured three others. A “person of interest” has been arrested and will be charged with one count of first degree intentional homicide.
Saturday night in LaPlace, Louisiana six people, all children, were shot at a 12-year old’s birthday party. None of the injuries were fatal. The suspected shooter was also a child. And in Shreveport, Louisiana, late Sunday five people were shot and hospitalized.
The Gun Violence Archive doesn’t even count the Austin, Texas killings as a “mass shooting” because it only includes events where at least four people were shot. Nor does it list the Ft. Worth, Texas 3-year old who shot and killed herself Sunday afternoon at a local park, or last weekend’s fatal shooting of an 11-year old boy by a 9-year old boy at a Dallas Walmart parking lot.
This weekend’s five major shootings are a slice of all the gun violence over the weekend. Every day on average there are 316 people shot, including 106 who are shot and killed.
Sunday was the 108th day of the year. The Gun Violence Archive lists 152 mass shootings through Sunday.
On social media Americans are reeling in anger over the explosion of gun violence just as some feel the coronavirus pandemic is slowly approaching some semblance of starting to be controlled as more and more people are getting vaccinated. (Sunday saw another 43,181 new cases, a dramatic drop from Friday’s 81,600 and Saturday’s 63,627.)
Others point to the Texas House this week passing legislation that would end the requirement for gun licenses, allowing unlicensed open or concealed carry to be legal.