On July 4, freedom may ring out with fireworks and celebrations, but another sound filled the air of several major cities this weekend: gunfire.

Seven people were shot in the wee hours of Saturday in Indianapolis, and six more caught bullets at a Houston music festival around the same time on the same day, the Guardian reported.

The Fourth of July brought New York City's "most concentrated explosion of gun violence this year," the New York Post reported, as a dozen people were shot, three fatally, within a five-hour span Saturday.

One victim "suffered a head wound so grisly that cops couldn’t tell if he’d been shot, stabbed or beaten," the Post reported.

But it may be the Windy City, not the Big Apple, that takes the dubious distinction of being the most violent major city on Independence Day weekend.

Chicago. (Image via Joe Penniston / flickr)

More than 50 people were shot in Chicago over the course of the long weekend, WMAQ-TV reported, with at least six people dying.

According to the local news station, the violence in Chicago was varied and widespread: drive-by shootings, homicides and at least two incidents in which police fatally gunned down suspects.

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