Flowers and candles are left outside the entrance of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio after a mass shooting during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California, U.S. January 23, 2023. REUTERS/David Swanson
President Joe Biden reasserted during his State of the Union address the urgency to act on gun violence. I know firsthand just what gun violence can do to a community because on January 21, 2023, the city I love and was elected to represent experienced one of the largest mass shootings in California’s history.
Like many other Asian Americans in Los Angeles County and across the country, I was excited to spend Lunar New Year with loved ones. An important holiday for Asian Americans, this Lunar New Year was the first time in a long time many of us were able to celebrate together. It was supposed to be a holiday full of love and light, and looking to the future.
Our lives were interrupted when we learned a gunman had targeted two dance ballrooms and killed 11 innocent people. The Monterey Park community was shocked, heartbroken, and scared. How could this happen here? A safe city that has been previously ranked as one of the country’s best places to live because of our schools, our local businesses, and our opportunities? And just as we began to process what happened, not even 48 hours later and about 400 miles north of us, another mass shooting unfolded in Half Moon Bay, California.
Unfortunately, shootings like these are not blips. These two incidents are all but just two more examples of a much wider tragedy long plaguing our communities: gun violence.
I came to Washington, D.C. this week to keep the stories of those impacted alive and shed a light on just how gun violence is tearing our communities apart. The issue of gun violence is nothing new to Asian Americans. We are still reeling and have suffered everywhere from California to Georgia to Indiana, from temples to spas to sidewalks. We are often viewed as a model minority, doing…
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