California Chaos

Story by Marcellus Peters Jackson. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

It's been a grim-looking start for 2023, to say the least. There were a grand total of 40 mass shootings in California within the month of January alone. 

Two men were arrested in central California after killing six people, all in the same family, on January 16th, 2023. This was a targeted attack, with both the victims and the assailants being related to a drug cartel. All six members were shot in the head, including a 16 year old mother and her ten month old child. It took ten days to arrest these suspects. In California, the suspects  can face the death penalty for their crimes.

Unsurprisingly, this assassination happened before multiple other shootings in California near  the end of January. One shooting was in Oakland, California, where one person died and the rest went to the hospital. In another shooting on January 21st, eleven people died. Just two days later, more were shot in Half Moon Bay. In 44 hours, there were three mass shootings with multiple casualties.

It feels like mass shootings happen all the time, so why is this important? Despite mass shootings now becoming  a common occurrence, death is still a serious event. The fact that so many people decided to open fire in one month, and nothing has been changed or done about it, means these people are essentially treated as forgettable names on a list that you’ll never see again. This is horrible, and we should do something to create change and make sure that these victims of gun violence aren’t forgotten. 

Marcellus Peters-Jackson is an 8th grade scholar at Friendship Woodridge International School.