Local authorities in New York said Monday at least three people were injured after a shooting between two groups near the route of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn.
According to local media outlets, the shooting erupted when two groups started fighting near 1187 Eastern Parkway around 5:20pm —the time the West Indian Day Parade was just winding up.
Authorities noted that the injured are expected to survive as their wounds are non-life threatening.
An FDNY vehicle was hit in the windshield by a possible stray bullet while driving at Eastern Parkway and Rochester Avenue at the time of the shooting, according to fire officials without any injury.
The West Indian Day Parade, a massive celebration of Caribbean culture, was held along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn Monday.
With over 470 mass shootings in the US, President Joe Biden initiated a last week a crackdown on the country’s arms dealers who are involved in selling weapons without valid licenses — that enable them to perform screening of buyers — by exploiting the legal loopholes.
The rules also tighten the grip on collectors who buy and sell guns, and on failed gun dealers selling their inventories.
The detailed rules were released by the Justice Department that follow the Joe Biden-backed Safer Communities Act passed by Congress in June 2022 in reaction to the large number of shooting deaths — especially in mass shootings — across the country.
The Justice Department said: “The aim is to force more firearms sellers to check the backgrounds of prospective purchasers in a national database in order to screen out felons and others forbidden from owning guns.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting is an act in which four or more people are injured or killed.
In the past three years, there have been over 600 gun violence incidents per year — making it almost two a day on average.
The rules are aimed at closing the gaps in the law that enable gun dealers to avoid securing licenses by claiming not to make money from transactions or by saying their lack of a storefront or insignificant sales volume exempts them from dealer requirements.
According to the estimates by the Gun Violence Archive, 44,374 people were killed by guns across the US last year, however, the number was down slightly this year, at 28,793 for the first eight months.
Suicides account for about 55% of all gun deaths.
