36 People Shot So Far During Chicago's Fourth of July Weekend [UPDATE]

By Jon Graef in News on Jul 5, 2014 4:30PM

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UPDATE, July 6, 11:30 a.m.: Chicago's violent Fourth of July weekend continued unabated as 11 people were shot, five of whom were killed, in overnight violence from Saturday to Sunday. According to the Chicago Tribune, that makes 50 people who have been shot this holiday weekend.

Starting Thursday afternoon, leading into Chicago's Fourth of July holiday weekend, a total of 36 people have been shot.

Twenty-one of those shot were wounded during an 11-hour stretch from Friday afternoon into Saturday morning, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The weekend shootings occurred citywide.

Of the total weekend shootings incidents so far, three involved police, one of which was described as a "suicide by cop," according to DNAInfo Chicago.

A second fatal police-involved shooting took place in Portage Park.

WGN reports that, "the lndependent Police Review Authority is investigating all of the incidents."

Miraculously--granted, a word of dubious value in contexts such as these--only three of the 36 people shot since Thursday afternoon were killed.

What's interesting about how media outlets report weekend shootings is when, for instance, the weekend actually starts in their minds.

The Tribune, for example, counts a fatal shooting which occurred near Garfield Park Thursday afternoon as the first shooting of the holiday weekend. (Heartbreaking quote from that piece: "It's like an everyday, normal thing." That's in reference to dozens of people being shot.)

The Sun-Times, however, lists the first shooting of the Fourth of July weekend as a Thursday evening incident which took place in Humboldt Park around 9:45 p.m.

Because of the discrepancy regarding when, exactly, the proper weekend starts, the Sun-Times story about weekend shootings lists only 26 people wounded, whereas the Tribune, in its story about the overnight shootings which occurred from Friday night to Saturday morning, says 36 people have been shot so far this weekend.

(DNAInfo Chicago, for its part, says 20 people were shot from Friday night to Saturday morning.)

Either way you count it, it's enough to make you wanna holler. So while these words may ring as maudlin, hollow, or sensationalized, rest assured that we utter them with 100 percent sincerity and conviction.

Chicago: put the goddamn guns down.

Last year, 72 people were shot over Fourth of July weekend.