Gun violence in cities is something sadly familiar to everyone.

We are not surprised to hear of a death toll in an American city over the weekend. We have ceased to be shocked by news of one or two or more shot on any given day in New York or Chicago — or in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. The blood and death are something we have come to abhor but also to expect.

On Sunday, we were reminded that bullets do not care about geography.

It was shortly after midnight when more than 150 people fled the Chevy Chase Community Center in White Township, Indiana County, as gunshots were fired.

“There was chaos and there were people who ran through the neighborhood,” said state police Lt. Col. George Bivens.

In the end, one man was killed — Jamar M. Porterfield Herriot Jr., 22, of Homestead. At least eight other people were injured.

Indiana County is far from urban. It is the kind of place where people often have guns but largely for hunting. The county of more than 800 square miles has a population just a quarter of Pittsburgh’s.

White Township is not that much smaller than Newtown, Conn., made infamous by the Sandy Hook school massacre. It’s much larger than Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 people were killed attending church one Sunday. It has almost exactly the same population as Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School.

Out of every 10 murders in the U.S. in 2021, eight involved a firearm, according to the Pew Research Center. That was 20,958 people.

Although the gross numbers for murder may be larger in cities, that is just about volume, not percentages. The National Criminal Justice Association says that when adjusted for population, less-dense communities have higher rates of gun violence per capita. In 2022, Philadelphia was 38th in firearm homicide rates. Phillips County, Ark., was in first place; it has a county population roughly the size of White Township.

When gun violence gets attention, it is too often centered on the idea that it is an urban problem, which makes it too easy for many to dismiss as something that happens to other people.

The problem of people being hurt and killed by a spray of bullets is not a city problem. It’s a people problem. It needs to be addressed that way.

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