WASHINGTON (Dispatches) - Less than a week after an elementary school massacre in Texas, nine people were killed and several dozen were injured in multiple mass shootings over Memorial Day weekend, according to the latest numbers collected by the Gun Violence Archive.
The online archive tracks incidents of gun violence in the U.S., including mass shootings, which it defines as having at least four victims shot, injured or killed by gunfire – not counting the shooter. The Gun Violence Archive said there were 15 mass shootings between 5 p.m. on Friday and 5 a.m. on Tuesday.
Nine people were killed and 63 injured in mass shootings during the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., according to data released.
The Gun Violence Archive research group tracked 14 mass shootings during the three-day weekend in 11 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. The period covered runs from early Saturday through late Monday.
The group tallied nearly 18,000 gun violence-related deaths this year, nearly 10,000 of which have been ruled suicides.
Throughout the first five months of 2022, the monitor cataloged 230 mass shootings, including 11 mass murders in 34 different states and Washington, D.C. It defines a mass shooting as having “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”
Gun violence more generally claimed the lives of 156 people and injured 412 from 5 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Tuesday, it said.
The tally comes in the wake of a devastating mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 elementary school students dead, as well as two adults. The shooting is the third deadliest in U.S. history.
And also, in the aftermath of a mass shooting on a New York City subway train, the mayor floated a high-tech idea: deploy scanners that can spot someone carrying a gun into the transit system before they have a chance to use it.
The technology to scan large numbers of people quickly for weapons does exist, and is used now to screen people at places like sports stadiums and theme parks.
But security experts say installing such a system in the city’s sprawling, porous subway system in a way that would make a difference would be difficult, if not impossible.
The problem wouldn’t necessarily be the technology — but rather the reality that scanners need to be accompanied by human operators to confront people carrying firearms illegally.
“Logistically, it would be a nightmare. You’re going to have to tie up a lot of officers doing this,” said James Dooley, a retired New York Police Department captain who served in the department’s transit division. “We have hundreds of stations, and the fact of the matter is that putting someone at every entrance to every station is logistically impossible.”