Good morning, Bulletin readers. The month of December is less than 48 hours old, yet Gun Violence Archive already counts at least four mass shootings, using the definition of four or more victims injured or killed. Your Monday round-up continues below.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Ten people were wounded in a mass shooting in New Orleans’s French Quarter. Shots rang out on iconic Canal Street around 3:30 am on Sunday morning, sending bystanders scrambling into a nearby drug store and later leaving others unable to access hotels cordoned off by crime scene tape. The New Orleans Police Department said that two victims were hospitalized in critical condition but released few other details on the injured. Nine hours later, four people were shot in the city, two fatally, in a separate shooting. The incidents marked a grim start to the month, but New Orleans-based crime analyst Jeff Asher put them in context: Shootings are down, and “the city is on pace for the fewest murders in a year since 1971,” he tweeted.
Two children were wounded in a mass shooting in the Bronx. Five people, including a 10-year-old and 14-year-old boy, were shot on a retail strip in the South Bronx on the afternoon before Thanksgiving. An after-school program was about to start classes when the unknown gunman began firing at a busy intersection. The director of the program was unconsoled by the fact that all the victims survived. “That’s just luck,” he told The New York Times. “Every bullet has its own trajectory. We might not be so lucky next time.”
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in its biggest gun case in years. New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. City of New York, which argues that a restriction that prevented licensed gun owners from taking their firearms outside the city violated the Second Amendment, could have significant implications for laws regulating the carrying of firearms in public spaces. Oral arguments are scheduled for today. ICYMI: Contributor Olivia Li grilled legal scholar Joseph Blocher on the possible outcomes.
Gun background checks flirted with a new all-time record on Black Friday. The sales boon that many retailers typically enjoy during the start of the holiday shopping season extends to gun sellers, who on November 29 requested more than 200,000 federal background checks on firearm purchasers, just shy of the single-day record of 203,086 set in 2017.
A teen gun reformer in Washington, D.C., was accepted to 25 colleges. RuQuan Brown started the clothing line Love1 last year after his stepfather and a football teammate were gunned down. A portion of the proceeds goes toward a program that turns guns into art. Brown hasn’t decided which college he will attend.
DATA POINT
There have been six shootings with 10 or more casualties in New Orleans since 2013. —4WWL
