Eight days, 25 dead: California shaken by string of mass shootings

All the names of the dead from one California mass shooting had not yet been released when the news alerts started again on Monday afternoon: there had been another shooting. There was another gunman at large. Seven more people were dead.

Gun violence takes a daily toll in California, but the brutality, scale and pace of the past week has felt different. In the course of just eight days, at least 25 people were killed in four separate mass shootings, defined as any shooting in which at least four people are injured.

An average of five California residents die from gun homicides each day, but mass-casualty shootings highlight how violence can upend any community in the state, from rural enclaves to quiet suburbs.

Less than four hours after the Half Moon Bay shootings, early on Monday evening, a group of people in Oakland were reportedly filming a music video when shooting broke out near a gas station. An 18-year-old was killed, and four other people were shot, ranging in age from 19 to 56, the East Bay Times reported. The perpetrators remained at large.

There appeared to be no limit to the age or vulnerability of the people at risk of being gunned down. Not even a week before the Monterey Park shooting, a 10-month old infant had been shot to death at home in Goshen, a small town in central California, in a shooting that left six people, across five generations of one family, dead.

A 72-year-old woman had been shot in her sleep. Sixteen-year-old Alissa Parraz and her son Nycholas had been found together in a ditch outside their home, where it appeared they had been trying to flee the attack. All were shot in the head.

The gunmen in Oakland and Goshen were still unidentified and at large.

But even in communities where the killers had been identified, and no longer posed a danger, there were still more questions than answers about the sudden violence, and what might have prevented it.

At the federal level, gun rights absolutists continue to gain political power in the courts.

A single George W Bush-appointed federal judge in California, Roger Benitez, has become famous for striking down California gun control laws.

While some Californians continue to call for even tighter gun laws, moments of crisis, including high-profile shootings, also fuel gun sales. Firearm purchases surged in California during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, with an estimated 5 million Americans nationwide becoming first-time gun owners in 2020 and 2021.

Amid an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, there has been a striking increase in the number of Asian Americans buying guns to protect themselves.

Community anti-violence programs exist across the state, many of them focused on identifying and working with potential perpetrators of gun violence. But these local programs are often understaffed and overstretched.

The onslaught of back-to-back tragedies has a cumulative impact on California residents, creating a sense of fear and despair, especially for people who see themselves in the victims that were targeted, advocates said.

Some survivors faced more barriers in getting help than others, local lawmakers said.

Lee, who is Chinese American, said it was also stunning to learn that the suspects in two separate mass shootings were older Asian men. While it was too soon to draw conclusions about what led to the violence, she noted that many Asian Americans in older generations may be grappling with unaddressed trauma, including from surviving war.

The Associated Press contributed reporting