New year brings a grim wave of mass killings across America

A woman comforts her son while visiting a makeshift memorial outside Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park. Photo / AP

Eleven people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans. Seven Chinese and Latino farmworkers were killed amid the serene beauty of California’s Half Moon Bay. A 17-year-old mother and her baby were shot dead in an attack that killed six people across five generations of her family.

While all three of the rampages unfolded in recent days in California, people across the United States are reeling from the onslaught of mass killings in the first weeks of 2023.

“There are simply too many guns in this country. And there has to be a change. This is not an acceptable way for a modern society to live and conduct its affairs,” San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Dave Pine said Monday, after the mushroom farm shootings about 50km south of San Francisco. “Our hearts are broken.”

The grim news from Half Moon Bay came as Californians were still trying to process the weekend carnage at the ballroom dance club in Monterey Park, a bustling Asian-American community at the eastern edge of Los Angeles.

Americans in recent years have learned to endure mass shootings in schools, churches and grocery stores, concerts and office parks, and inside the homes of friends and neighbours. The violence can stem from hatred towards other communities, grievances within a community, secrets within families and bitterness among colleagues.

A database of mass killings maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University shows 2023 off to a particularly deadly start, with 39 people slain in six shootings since January 4, when a Utah man, investigated but never charged over a 2020 child abuse complaint, shot and killed his wife, her mother and their five children before killing himself.

The database shows 2793 people have lost their lives in mass killings involving four or more victims, excluding the killer, since 2006.

In the Saturday night shooting in Monterey Park, 11 people died and nine others were injured when a 72-year-old man opened fire at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, just hours after tens of thousands of revellers filled the streets nearby for Lunar New Year festivities. The gunman killed himself as police approached his van the next day.

The 67-year-old suspect in the Half Moon Bay shooting was arrested in the carpark of a police station. In both cases, investigators are still trying to learn what fuelled the shootings.

“We have not even had time to grieve for those lost in the terrible shooting in Monterey Park. Gun violence must stop,” Pine said. “The status quo cannot be tolerated.”