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A shocking mass shooting outside of Los Angeles on Saturday night marks the nation’s fifth mass murder in the young new year, and the deadliest since the Uvalde, Texas elementary school tragedy in May 2022.
Following the first night of Lunar New Year celebrations in the 60,000-person San Gabriel Valley city of Monterey Park, an unidentified gunman opened fire on a ballroom dancing studio in the Asian-American enclave.
The mayhem resulted in ten deaths and at least ten injuries, according to officials. It was first unclear whether the massacre was random, targeted, or driven by hatred.
The catastrophe followed one of the deadliest years ever for mass killings in the United States. According to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, 42 such incidents — defined as events in which four people are slain, excluding the perpetrator — occurred in 2022.
210 people were killed in mass killings in the United States in 2018, the second-highest total since record-keeping began in 2006, and 42 people were killed in such assaults, the third-highest total after 2017 and 2019.
The data revealed that the vast majority of mass murders are carried out in private by family members or acquaintances of the victims. Although there have been public mass murders with indiscriminate victims, such as the 19 young students and two children murdered by a deranged teenager at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the vast majority of mass murders are carried out in private by family members or acquaintances of the victims.
The most typical sort of mass murder, according to James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University in Boston who oversees the database, is a man who kills his wife and children, then himself.
According to the paper, of more than 650 mass killings analyzed, nearly 600 were committed by men and the vast majority were carried out using firearms.
According to the database, younger men were more likely to carry out random mass shootings, whereas middle-aged men were more likely to pull the trigger in domestic massacres.
Since 2006, about 2,800 of these victims were somewhat more likely to be male than female, and mass shootings with high death tolls typically occurred outside of major cities.
The study revealed that Whites were more likely to be victims of mass shootings and perpetrators of such horrible acts than members of any other race.
Approximately 225 white individuals were identified as mass murderers, compared to 216 black suspects and 83 Hispanic suspects.
The database does not contain homicides committed by drug traffickers, gang members, or other criminals against other criminals.
According to a study published in the medical journal Psychiatric Times, the typical shooter is an angry, emotionally unstable, solitary male.
Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University, stated, “Those who are paranoid, suspicious, mistrusting, and believe that everyone is against them are more likely to commit mass murder.”
It is a person who has fewer resources for adjusting to a catastrophe, such as losing a job or a significant other, and will feel that his life is finished.
The Uvalde shooting and a “racially motivated” grocery shooting in a black area in Buffalo, New York, which murdered ten people weeks earlier, pushed Albany lawmakers to restrict guns in public transportation, clubs, churches, and Times Square.
A month after the duel tragedies, President Biden signed the first significant national gun safety bill in decades, a month after the duel tragedies. The bill strengthened background checks for gun purchasers under the age of 21, allocated millions for mental health treatment, and incentivized states to implement red flag regulations.
Before Republicans took control of the House earlier this month, a plan to prohibit assault rifles languished.
There is no unanimity on what defines a mass shooting, but according to the Gun Violence Archive, at least 600 of them occurred in the United States last year.
In 2022, around 44,000 Americans were killed by firearms, more than half of which were suicides.
»California Lunar New Year shooting followed a near-record year of mass murder«