Two shootings in Half Moon Bay, California, a small coastal town in the San Francisco Bay region, resulted in at least seven fatalities. In Oakland, one person was shot to death and seven other people were injured.
Also on Monday, an 11th victim of the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, who had been celebrating the Lunar New Year weekend, passed away from their wounds. The scenes of agony and horror are increasingly all too familiar in America. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 39 mass shootings have actually occurred across the nation in the first three weeks of 2023.
From Goshen, California, to Baltimore, Maryland, communities are in upheaval while others brace for the possibility of such violence in their own backyards.
“A time of a cultural celebration … and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence,” Vice President Kamala Harris told a crowd in Tallahassee, Florida. “All of us in this room and in our country understand this violence must stop.”
However, it is unclear how that will be accomplished given the polarised nature of Congress, the drastically divergent policy suggestions, and the pervasive gun culture.
President Joe Biden asked Congress to "act soon" and enact two legislation that would prohibit assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and raise the legal buying age to 21.
“The majority of the American people agree with this common-sense action. There can be no greater responsibility than to do all we can to ensure the safety of our children, our communities, and our nation,” he said in a statement.