91 Dead to date this year

On New Year’s Eve of the Lunar Year, a 72 year old madman from Hemet opened fire in a Monterey Park Dance Studio and Club and killed 10 New Year celebrants and wounded 10. He left and went to a similar Club in Alhambra where two patrons disarmed him. He fled and was spotted the next morning in Torrance. When the police approached his vehicle he shot himself and died.

The victims were apparently an older crowd that were celebrating the New Year at a party at the club where they took ballroom, latin and Chinese dance classes. What a sadness. The shooter was an old man who had reported to the Hemet Police where he lived that people were trying to poison him. The victims were also older people who belonged to a dance club. It’s remarkable that the shooter and the victims were all Asian, either Vietnamese or Chinese Americans.

And life goes on in America. Another mass shooting. A couple of weeks ago a whole family from a ten month old baby in their mother’s arms to grandparents were murdered in the Central Valley by gangsters. Eleven years ago a madman killed 7 people at Oikos University here in Oakland. A rare event in 1999 when the Columbine shootings occurred has now become commonplace, disturbed teenagers, madmen, paranoids, and politically deranged people are arming themselves and killing people en masse for all sorts of reasons, political, personal, jobs, race, gangs or sometimes for no discernible reason at all.

In a country of 330 million people these type of people are inevitable but only in America are we insane enough to make sure everyone who wants a weapon of nearly any kind can obtain it and to claim this as a constitutional right. With various loopholes, this includes violent felons and the insane. There are even court cases where the right to buy a gun for the disturbed or the mad is defended. A majority of Americans believe there should be limits but the gun manufacturers and their association the NRA fight common sense controls every step of the way.

Of course, almost all other countries control their citizens owning weapons very tightly. For myself single shot long rifles or shotguns for hunting or even protection are fine. But assault rifles, automatics, pistols, weapons meant only for killing people should be banned and gradually removed from circulation. It’s not going to happen in the United States for now and periodic mass murders like Monterey Park and worse should be expected frequently. There’s nothing rare about them now.

Reaching out to the isolated and deranged with decent mental health services wouldn’t hurt either.

Two days later another overwrought Chinese American man shot 7 coworkers to death in Half Moon Bay. The victims were farm workers at a mushroom farm. He was captured alive a short time later in a parking lot familiar to me from my Half Moon Bay days.

Monday a video was filming at the corner of MacArthur and Seminary at the gas station there, a few blocks from our house. Gunfire erupted and 1 person was shot dead and four people were wounded. It was multiple shooters and was apparently gang related.

91 people have died in mass shootings in the United States this month. This is according to a crowd sourced data base, Mass Shooting Tracker where four or more people shot defines a mass shooting.