The epidemic of gun violence continues unabated in the US. In the latest episode, a 72-year-old suspect killed 10 people at a dance studio and club in Monterey Park, a city near Los Angeles with a large Asian community Saturday night. The police identified the man as Huu Can Tran, who killed himself on Sunday as the police approached him.
Witnesses to the mass shooting said he had shot indiscriminately, and appeared to have a lot of ammunition. Those dead include five men and five women, most in their 50s or 60s, police said, with around 10 others injured.
The very next day, another mass shooting was reported from a Baton Rouge nightclub in Louisiana, in which a dozen people were injured. One of the victims is in critical condition. The police have not arrested anyone yet for the early morning attack, but believe it was “targeted.”
“This was not a random act of violence, based on the preliminary investigating efforts,” Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. “We believe that this was a targeted event, where someone was specifically targeted and others were injured in that process.”
The gravity of the situation can be gauged by the fact that we are only 23 days into the new year, but the US has already witnessed at least 36 mass shootings, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive. This means there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in 2023. While there is no clear lines to define what constitutes a mass shooting, the group defines it as one where at least four people have either been killed or injured.
Last year, it pegged the number at 648, with 21 incidents where five or more people died.
The Monterey Park shooting is the deadliest since the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, reported on May 24 last year, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
It was also the second major incident in less than a week in California. Last week, six people died in a gang-related shooting in Tulare County, which included a teen mother and her six-month-old baby.
Recent shootings in the US
A Walmart store manager killed six people at a Virginia outlet and later shot himself dead on November 22. He was identified as Andre Bing, 31, who managed the store overnight and had been a Walmart employee since 2010. An employee told reporters that Bing had gathered the employees in the break room for a meeting to go over the morning plan. Bing then turned around and started firing randomly without looking at anyone in particular.
On the night of November 19, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich shot dead five people and injured 19 at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Aldrich held an AR-15 style rifle and carried multiple magazines of ammunition. A US Army veteran, Richard M. Fierro, soon tackled the shooter and managed to remove the rifle from his hand.
Three student football players were killed and at least two others injured following a shooting in University of Virginia on November 13. Hours after an intense manhunt, police managed to catch the suspect, a University of Virginia student and ex-UVA football player.
The Memphis police arrested a 19-year-old black American suspect in relation to multiple shootings, one of which he posted on Facebook. On September 7, the man went on a rampage and opened fire randomly, killing four and leaving at least three people injured.