Mass shootings in America get deadlier as gunman kills 10 in Los Angeles

By: Yash Gupte

A 2018 report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey discovered that US gun owners had 393.3 million firearms, which is more than the nation's current population of 330 million.

The Associated Press reported on Sunday that ten people were killed in a mass shooting that occurred late Saturday in a Californian hamlet near Los Angeles, where tens of thousands of people were celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year. Five women and five men were killed in the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, and an additional 10 people were injured. Captain Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said that hospitals received the injured, some of whom were in critical condition. According to reports, a female deputy described the shooting, which happened at 10:22 p.m., as an "isolated event." The distance between downtown Los Angeles and Monterey Park, a city of around 60,000 inhabitants with a sizable Asian population, is about 16 kilometres. Saturday was the start of a two-day Chinese New Year festival that is one of the largest Lunar New Year events in southern California. The second day of the festival - Sunday - was cancelled after the attack.

The hunt for the gunman who had killed 10 people came to an end on Sunday when police found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the van he used to flee the spot of incident after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting.

The overall number of firearm-related deaths in the US increased to 45,222 in 2020, the highest amount the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ever recorded since it began keeping track of such deaths in 1968. This corresponds to an average of 124 people each day dying from gun violence. Around 54 percent of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (24,292), while 43 percent were murders (19,384). The figure represents a 34 percent increase from 2019, and a 75 percent increase over the course of the previous decade. In 2017, some 39,773 died from gunshot injuries, an average of nearly 109 people each day. That year also saw country's worst mass shooting in a decade when 50 people were killed and over 500 wounded in Las Vegas.

Source: Gun Violence Archive

More than 600 mass shootings were reported in the United States in 2022 alone, according to data from the Washington based Gun Violence Archive, which is more than twice as many as the 336 mass shootings that were recorded four years earlier. A mass shooting is any incident in which four or more persons are shot or killed, excluding the shooter.

Source: Small Arms Survey

A 2018 report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey discovered that US gun owners had 393.3 million firearms, which is more than the nation's current population of 330 million. United States also has the highest firearms per 100 residents’ ratio. And the figure is increasing. According to GVA, 7.5 million US adults - just under 3 percent of the population - became first new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021. About half of new gun owners in that time period were women while 40 percent where blacks.

The deadliest shooting in California history was in 1984 when 21 people were killed at a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro.