It's happened again. A news cycle focusing on the loss of life in one high-profile mass shooting was interrupted with the news of another. On January …
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A week of tragedy in California
On the eve of the Lunar New Year, eleven people were killed at a dance studio in Monterey Park, a tight-knit suburb of Los Angeles. Two days later, seven others were killed in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. "It doesn't have to be this way," said Governor Gavin Newsom on the tragedies that have profoundly affected Asian-American communities across the country.
MONTEREY PARK
On Saturday, January 21, eleven people were killed and nine other injured when a gunman opened fire in a dance studio. The following day, authorities began to approach the assailant's van when they heard a shot erupt wherein the gunman died of a self-inflicted injury. The shooting has sent shockwaves through the tight-knit predominately Asian suburb of Los Angeles.
Half Moon Bay
Two days after the Monterey Bay shootings, a man opened fire at two different farms killing seven people in Half Moon Bay, a small city just south of San Francisco. Five of the victims were Chinese citizens. The assailant told NBC Bay Area that he was bullied for many years on the farm and believed that proper action was never taken.
HOW THESE SHOOTINGS AFFECT THE ASIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
The shootings in California have profoundly affected the Asian American community in the country with both tragedies directly targeting the community. This violence bring about memories of the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings in March 2021 which killed eight people -- six of whom were women of Asian descent. It is considered to have spurred the #StopAsianHate movement.
Asian Americans saw two back-to-back mass shootings in their communities. On Saturday, 11 people in Monterey Park were killed; 7 more died in Half Moon Bay on Monday. Fear of violence among Asian people has been higher since the pandemic, advocates told Insider.
GUN VIOLENCE ISN’T SLOWING DOWN IN THE US
Mass shootings have been an unfortunate fact of life for Americans and despite recent gun reform, experts expect the statistics for 2023 to look similar to 2022 and 2021.
So far this year, the US has seen 36 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings in the US. That's more mass shootings in the month of January than in the previous five Januarys, dating back to at 2018.
