Just a month ago, 11 people were shot and killed in Monterey Park during a Lunar New Year dance, and seven people were shot and killed in Half Moon Bay two days later. Nearly all were of Asian descent, some of them at work, some of them at a club for ballroom dancing. To remember them and to urge a continued fight for greater gun safety laws, their 18 names were read by Terease Chin and Helen Wong at Speaker's Corner in Santa Barbara on Sunday, bracketed by a haunting melody played on a Japanese flute by Bob Sedivy and the ritual burning of incense.
Organized by the Asian American-Pacific Islander Solidarity Network, Moms Demand Action , Michel Lynch, and several others, the group stood in the same spot two years ago, recalled one organizer, Juliet Butita, to mourn the eight people who were killed in spas in Georgia, nearly all of them women of Asian descent. "This is not a political issue," Betita said of the rally's call for an end to gun violence. "This is a public safety issue and a public health issue."
The gun violence statistics are astounding, and "heart-wrenching," as Supervisor Das Williams described it. In the two short months of 2023 gone by, 90 mass shootings have taken place and 2,835 people have died, according to the Gun Violence Archive .