shootings

Help us make Essential California serve you better. Take this survey.Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Jan. 25.In the span of eight days, a family home in the San Joaquin Valley, a popular dance hall in Monterey Park, mushroom farms near Half Moon Bay and a gas station in Oakland all became scenes of horrific gun violence.Twenty-five people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded in four shootings across California — three of them mass shootings — that have left…

As mourners were gathering Monday evening for a candlelight vigil in Monterey Park for 11 people killed by a gunman at a dance studio, word spread of another mass shooting in Half Moon Bay.Siu Fong, a Monterey Park retiree who volunteers at the Langley Senior Center, knew two of the victims of that shooting. With another spasm of violence less than two days later, she was left wondering: What is happening?“I would say there needs to be a little bit more gun control,” she said. “Of course, a lot of people say they need…

Help us make Essential California serve you better. Take this survey.Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Jan. 24.As the investigation continues into a gunman’s deadly attack in Monterey Park, news broke Monday of another mass shooting in California — the second within 48 hours.Here’s what we know so far.At least seven people were killed in two related shootings in the Northern California beach city of Half Moon Bay, according to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.Deputies…

Whatever else has happened, or will happen, in the vividly eventful career of movie star Alec Baldwin, his name is destined to be linked with that of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, whom he tragically shot dead on a movie set in New Mexico in 2021. Baldwin accidentally fired a live bullet from a revolver being used as a prop. Now he faces criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter, despite a private legal settlement Baldwin reportedly reached with the Hutchins family.Alec Baldwin’s mercurial, defiant, combatively…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A grim and familiar pattern has followed the parade of mass shootings across America. In their aftermath, the nation's attention focuses on the direct victims of the attacks, the dead and injured, their families and friends, and the witnesses. But a growing body of research reveals that the negative…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Six months after the mass murder of young students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, shootings at U.S. schools appear to have reached a five-year high, according to Education Week. The nonprofit magazine reports that 34 people have been killed and 88 have been injured as a result of 40 shootings at schools this year. …

Most mass murderers whose crimes occurred in school settings did not have severe psychiatric illnesses, according to a new research study by Columbia University.Data from Columbia Mass Murder Database reveal psychosis and other serious psychiatric illness absent in the majority of perpetrators.Researchers examining 82 mass murders that occurred at least partially in academic settings throughout the world found that most mass murderers and mass shooters did not have severe psychiatric illnesses. The work was done by a…

This data includes all events when a gun is brandished or is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time or day of the week. Credit: Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: David Riedman, K-12 School Shooting Database As a Michigan teen pleaded guilty on Oct. 24, 2022, to killing four students in a December 2021 attack, America was learning of yet another school…

Security camera footage from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas as a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers while hundreds of police officers waited outside.Screenshot: Austin American-StatesmanPublic school districts in Texas will soon start offering DNA and fingerprint kits to families of students as part of a law to help identify children in case of an “emergency,” according to a new report from the Houston Chronicle. And while the law never explicitly says it’s for identifying kids whose bodies may be…

People lay flowers and cards near a spot where a mass shooting took place during the 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois on July 6, 2022.Jacek Boczarski | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesThe survivors and families of victims of recent mass shootings in Texas and Illinois are taking on gun companies and stores in dozens of lawsuits, alleging the businesses bear responsibility for the massacres.Last week, survivors of the July 4 mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, sued gun maker Smith & Wesson…