A Message from Patti Giggans, Executive Director

Dear Friend,

We are starting off the new year heartbroken. Families and communities continue to be heartbroken by the constant mass shootings that go on in the United States, most recently here in Los Angeles and California.

This past weekend, on Lunar New Year, we were faced with a huge tragedy in Monterey Park, a predominantly Asian community near downtown LA. 11 people have died, and more injured. People gathered to dance and celebrate and it turned into a death dance choreographed by a man with a gun. While everyone was welcoming the Roman calendar new year of 2023 and the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit, we have been confronted once again with mass shootings and people dying from gun violence.

This is too much. It is not new, and it is getting worse.

Mass shootings happen every day in our country. So common they practically don’t make the news. Mass gun killings are part of America’s DNA now. How tragic for us all.

Gun violence recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children.

Domestic violence is a factor in two-thirds or 60% of mass shootings.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter. There have been more mass shootings this January 2023 than at this point in any year on record.

There have been 40 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, including the one in Monterey Park, California — the deadliest attack since the Uvalde, Texas massacre in May 2022. The Monterey Park shooting was one of three mass shootings here in California over a three-day span this month.

If these tragedies do not signal an emergency, I don’t know what does.

We call for treating this like the crisis that it is: a mental health, public health, public safety, political emergency.

I wrote a blog outlining some of my proposed gun safety measures last year, it can be read here. 

In our fifty years of experience in intervening and preventing interpersonal violence, we have always stood with survivors of violence. We recently received funding from California Partnership to End Domestic Violence (CPEDV) to work on gun violence prevention and education, and we will not stop there. Today and everyday, we remain committed in solidarity. We will continue to work together building a world without violence, in spite of our broken hearts.

Let’s protect each other.