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As the nation faces a pandemic, financial catastrophe and massive social justice protests, it is suddenly also confronting a spike in violence in some of its major cities. Tragedies struck in urban centers thousands of miles apart, with 65 people shot over the weekend in New York and 87 in Chicago, and homicides climbing from Miami to Milwaukee. Though the summer months in the United States often augur more violence, the recent toll has been particularly devastating in communities where the victims included young children. (Berman, Jacobs, B. Guarino and M. Guarino, 7/6)

For the last six weekends, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown has awakened to word of another eruption of shootings in his city. On Monday, Brown stood at another news conference and admitted he was "biting my tongue," trying desperately to maintain his emotions as he spoke of 7-year-old Natalia Wallace, one of two children fatally shot on the Fourth of July, a week after 20-month-old Sincere Gaston and 10-year-old Lena Nunez were shot to death in the city. (Hutchinson, 7/6)

Gov. Brian Kemp will deploy as many as 1,000 Georgia National Guard troops to protect state buildings in Atlanta on Monday following a burst of violence across the city that left four dead, including an 8-year-old girl, and saw the ransacking of the headquarters of the Georgia State Patrol. Kemp, a Republican, issued the emergency order after threatening late Sunday to “take action” to curb the unrest in Atlanta if Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms failed to do so, a move that highlighted the complicated, and increasingly tense, relationship between two of the state’s most prominent politicians. (Bluestein, 7/6)

Activists with Black Lives Matter had a vision for what the scorched remains of a Wendy’s restaurant could become: the Rayshard Brooks Peace Center, a gathering place in Atlanta with job training, counseling and youth programs that would be a living memorial named for the man whose fatal encounter with the police transformed the fast-food eatery into the heart of the city’s turmoil. But the lofty aspirations have been clouded by continuing violence. On Saturday, an 8-year-old girl, Secoriea Turner, was gunned down, the authorities said, after an armed group stopped her family’s car nearby. (Rojas, 7/6)

A young father crossing a Bronx street, holding hands with his 6-year-old daughter. A 15-year-old who refused to talk to the police in Manhattan. A man in a Staten Island public housing complex, found prone in his apartment. They were among 64 people shot in a surge of shootings over the weekend in New York City, the police said. Ten of those shot lost their lives, including the young father and the Staten Island man — a wave of summertime violence that has given renewed urgency to a gun violence crisis that had been overshadowed this year by the coronavirus pandemic and by unrest over police racism and brutality. (Southall, 7/6)