1000 cities, 6000 shootings....

Do we need a "remembrance day" for all the Americans who are shot or killed over the Memorial Day weekend?

Now, here’s a closer look at 100 communities that have historically experienced the most gun violence during Memorial Day “weekend” (including Friday-Monday), in ascending order based on total shootings, although this varies year over year. This first group includes small and mid-sized cities, plus large cities with relatively low gun violence rates compared to other large cities. Note the 2017 and 2020 “spikes” in these cities.

This chart includes mostly mid-sized cities:

This chart includes a mix of small, mid-sized, and large cities:

And finally, this chart includes mostly large cities, or small cities that experienced a dramatic spike in shootings during a particular year. I’m not one to pile on Chicago, since the windy city receives enough negative press about gun violence despite having a lower firearm homicide rate than plenty of large cities, but Memorial Day weekend in Chicago is objectively terrible for gun violence.

As we can see from these charts, there’s a lot of annual variation in the amount of Memorial Day gun violence observed in select cities, but there’s also been an uptick in recent years with a clear spike in 2020 and/or 2021 that decreased somewhat in 2022. I’ll post the 2023 data when it comes in. I’ll be looking to see if cities like Chicago, Portland, and Philadelphia have begun to reverse the negative trend of increased annual shootings. I’m also hopeful that we’ll see places like Tulsa, Cleveland, San Antonio, Columbus, and Indianapolis continuing on the right track to experience fewer shootings.