Four people were killed and four others were wounded in a mass shooting Monday night in Philadelphia in the latest chapter of the US gun violence crisis, as per media reports.

Philadelphia police spokesperson Miguel Torres said as quoted by AFP there were multiple gunshot victims but provided no numbers or details.

The Philadelphia Enquirer, CNN, and other news outlets reported that a suspect in the shooting in the eastern city's Kingsessing neighborhood had been arrested.

The Enquirer reported that at least two teenagers were among those shot.

According to the report, police caught a guy who was wearing a bulletproof vest and found a handgun, a rifle, and extra magazines of ammunition in an alleyway.

The paper went on to say that the crime scene has been sprawling, with people shot at several locations.

This comes shortly after a shooting in Baltimore, Maryland, early Sunday morning injured dozens of people and killed two.

According to Baltimore Police, officers and emergency professionals went to the scene in the 800 block of Gretna Avenue. "They just kept going off," one witness said.

The big picture

The debate on banning guns in the US was given a lot of impetus in May 2022, when a string of mass shootings that left dozens dead culminated in Congress discussing a ban on assault rifles.

The US House of Representatives passed in July 2022 a bill that stipulates banning assault weapons, marking a first in decades in light of a mass shooting epidemic in the country.

The anti-gun legislation was approved by 217 House members and opposed by 213 in the body controlled by a Democratic party majority.

The United States is deeply divided about reforming gun laws despite the aforementioned erratic episode of gun violence. The bill passed the House floor with the support of two Republicans who joined efforts with their Democratic counterparts and backed the measure.

The bill passing marked the first ban on assault rifles since 1994 when Congress passed a 10-year ban on weapons and certain high-capacity magazines. Lawmakers, however, let the ban expire in 2004, sending the sales of arms nationwide skyrocketing.

The bill bans the sale, import, manufacture, or transfer of certain semi-automatic rifles, which have long been used in the United States in mass shootings, especially over mid-2022, such as in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Illinois.

Gunmakers in the United States have seen a tremendous hike in earnings from their sales of AR-15-style rifles, a US House Oversight Committee probe revealed last year while lawmakers and the public call for holding the industry accountable for crimes committed using their products.

Check out: Deadliest US mass shootings in 2023 so far