Gun violence is a daily reality across the US, but an emerging body of research indicates the most risky day for mass shootings in the nation is the Fourth of July, when Americans celebrate their independence from Britain.
Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, found that there have been 52 mass shootings on the Fourth of July over the past decade, averaging just over five a year, and more than on any other given day.
His analysis, which he implemented for USA Today, underscores how, in a country where Republicans in many states have acted to loosen gun laws, it is routine that the barbecues, block parties and parades held to commemorate the US’s birthday become scenes of bloodshed.
“The fact that you have states that allow concealed carry without a permit, without any training, is problematic. When you have block parties, for example, people are going there with guns in their pockets, and then they can get into an argument over even trivial things, which can lead to gunfire, and it’s a large gathering like a block party or a party at an Airbnb, lots of people get shot in the crossfire,” Fox said.
“They may not be involved in that argument, that dispute, but the bullet doesn’t know that.”
Last year, a gunman opened fire from a rooftop and killed seven people attending an Independence Day parade in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. The violence was part of a string of mass killings that led gun control-wary Republicans in Congress to partner with Democrats and pass legislation that contained modest reforms intended to halt the violence.
But the drumbeat of killings and woundings continues. Though definitions of mass shootings vary, the Gun Violence Archive categorizes them as incidences in which at least four people are shot, reporting 647 of these events in 2022, and 340 so far this year.
Massacres at schools, shopping malls and churches have shocked Americans, but such mass killings are comparatively less common. Defining them as incidences in which at least four people have been killed, the Gun Violence Archive reports 36 last year, and 25 this year so far.
Many mass shootings are instead like what happened in Baltimore’s Brooklyn Homes neighborhood this past weekend, in which two people were killed and 28 injured when gunmen opened fire at a block party in an incident that is still being investigated.
Daniel Webster, a professor focusing on gun violence reduction strategies at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said Brooklyn Homes is “a community very under-resourced, a lot of folks struggling and guns are readily available. So you put that brew together with the well-into-the-night gatherings, you’ve got the potential, anyway, for a mass shooting.” Brooklyn Homes is just one of many impoverished neighborhoods in a city with one of the worst murder rates in the country.
“It’s usually useful to think about gun violence as a phenomenon of grievances and altercations,” Webster continued. “And these things can lead to multiple people shot rather than one, simply because July 4 brings people together.”
Held during a time of year that sees historically elevated homicide rates along with higher temperatures – another driver of homicide – it’s easy for disputes to boil over at Independence Day celebrations, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
“We know that homicide tends to spike in summer months to begin with, and they’re usually highest around July and August,” Schildkraut said. “There’s a lot of people who are gathered in large groups in typically open spaces, which we know tend to be characteristic of mass shootings, as well. We also know, of course, when you add in things like alcohol and other potential influences … all together, it kind of creates a perfect storm where things are going to go bad pretty quickly.”
After 4 July, Fox found that the day with the second highest number of mass shootings over the past decade was 5 July, which had 44. Fox attributes the 5 July shootings to late-night parties, or years when people are given the day off because Independence Day falls on a Sunday. Ranking third was New Year’s Day, another traditional party time.
Mass shootings on 4 July have become more common in recent years, according to researchers. Last year, Schildkraut co-authored a study that found mass shootings surged after the Covid-19 public health emergency was declared in March 2020, and peaked on Independence Day before declining. Fox’s analysis, meanwhile, found that there were four mass shootings on 4 July 2019, then nine in 2020, 11 in 2021 and 10 in 2022.
“I think one of the challenges in this space is people think that those events can never happen where they are,” said Schildkraut, who grew up near Parkland, Florida, and studied in Orlando, both cities that have suffered terrible mass shootings.
“There is a mentality that it doesn’t matter what variant of mass shooting you’re talking about, that people still are resigned to seeing it as everyone else’s problem but their own and as something that we respond to, but we don’t as a nation, on a very aggregate level, work as effectively to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
