'Year of Carnage' Continues With 12 Mass Shootings Over Weekend

At least a dozen mass shootings took place over the weekend across the country, killing at least 11 people and injuring another 69. CNN combined its own stats with those from the Gun Violence Archive, as well as police and other media reports, and found the latest slew of mass shootings—defined by CNN as shootings that result in at least four people killed or wounded, not counting the shooter—took place in eight states between Friday night and Sunday: Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The weekend fatalities included three dead at a bar in Youngstown, Ohio, where three were also injured; one dead and three injured at an apartment complex in Fort Wayne, Ind.; a 16-year-old girl killed and five other people injured in a park shooting in Columbus, Ohio; two dead and 12 injured at a house party in Cumberland County, NJ; a 14-year-old girl killed and 13 other people injured at an unauthorized concert in North Charleston, SC; one dead and eight wounded in downtown Minneapolis; and two dead and four injured in Jersey City, NJ.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls this weekend's shootings part of a "year of carnage," continuing a "staggering trend of mass shootings [that] have quickly rebounded to the forefront of American life" as the country starts to get COVID-19 under control. In fact, the pandemic's lockdowns and other restrictions may be partly what's behind the resurgence of mass shootings, says Hart Brown, senior VP of crisis management firm R3 Continuum. "The environment that was created by the pandemic ... and the compounding stressors is really what's driving much of the violence that we're seeing right now," he told Reuters earlier this month. Despite the reemergence of this type of gun violence, a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April finds that gun policy remains a "deeply divisive" topic along partisan lines, with the majority of Democrats leaning toward stricter gun-safety laws, while Republicans are mostly balking at such measures. (More mass shootings stories.)