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Chicago recorded 2,000 shootings this year by 5 p.m. on Monday. This came after the city experienced its most violent weekend of the year, with 104 people shot — including 13 children — and 19 killed.

We hope the Supreme Court listens and learns from Chicago’s horrific weekend of gun violence, and weigh heavily the realities of public safety when the court takes up a potential landmark gun case in its next term. Gun advocates argue for their unfettered right to carry guns wherever they wish, arguing that this would make everyone safer. But guns are already everywhere. If more guns made us safer, we would be the safest nation on Earth, the Editorial Board writes.

Reflecting on the numbers and reports of the lives lost, Sun-Times reader J.L. Stern of Highland Park can’t help but notice how the shooters care nothing about killing someone who just happens to be on the street when they’re shooting at somebody else. In Letters to the Editor, Stern wonders how these young men with guns were brought up to have no regard or love for others.

In Commentary, Rick Telander weighs in on the Supreme Court ruling against colleges putting caps on education-related benefits for athletes. For those who don’t like this upending of the “amateur” world, who enjoyed having unpaid TV and stadium superstars entertaining them without voice or income — well, sorry, Telander said. Just know this could have been resolved decades ago.

When the Supreme Court takes up gun violence in its next term, we hope the justices will remember Chicago’s real-world experience over this Fourth of July weekend, when 104 people were shot and at least 19 killed.

We all need to take a step back from the sometimes facile exercise of looking at trends — how many shootings this year compared to last year, let’s say, or how many shootings in Chicago compared to other cities — and think hard about what just happened.

More than 100 Chicagoans were shot on what should have been a pleasant holiday weekend.

When the Supreme Court reconvenes in September, it is slated to decide whether to give people greater rights to carry firearms in public. The court could settle on a range of options, but gun violence opponents worry, for good reason, that the new conservative majority will upend a New York law at the heart of the case. If the court strikes down the century-old law, which places restrictions on who can carry guns, the result could be a scaling back of laws across the country, including in Illinois, designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Gun advocates argue for their unfettered right to carry guns wherever they wish, arguing that this would make everyone safer. But guns are already everywhere. If more guns made us safer, we would be the safest nation on Earth.

Instead, gun shootings in the U.S. this year, as of Tuesday afternoon, have claimed 22,676 lives, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In New York on Tuesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a disaster emergency because of the extreme gun violence there.

More than 100 people were shot in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend. We can’t go on this way.

The Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board is the opinion voice of the hardest-working newspaper in America. It is headed by editorial page editor Tom McNamee and includes Thomas Frisbie, Lorraine Forte, Lee Bey, Ismael Pérez and Mary Mitchell as members.

For some reason, we in America love the notion of the amateur athlete, the idealized jock doing his or her sport for nothing, carefree and innocent, like a fawn in a meadow, happy just to play the game even if those around him or her make fortunes off that play.

It’s telling that we know the word “amateur” best by its opposite. An amateur is someone who is not a professional.

But who is a professional? Or rather, who isn’t?

“What’s happened to brotherly love?”

Every day we publish submissions from Chicago Sun-Times readers weighing in on issues facing the city and its residents. Send letters to letters@suntimes.com or reply to this email to share your perspective.