Connect with us

Published

on

The US has experienced more mass shootings than days so far in 2023, with thousands dead as a result.

There were at least 191 in the first 127 days of the year, with the latest in a busy Texas shopping mall leaving nine people dead, including the suspected gunman.

On average, the US has seen more than 39,000 gun deaths a year since 2014, and as of 1 May at least 13,959 people have been shot dead in 2023, according to data from Gun Violence Archive.

That is a rate of 115 deaths per day. And on each one, America is more likely to see a mass shooting than not.

Gun Violence Archive broadly defines a mass shooting to mean four or more people (excluding the perpetrator) shot at roughly the same time and location, regardless of fatalities or motives.

Below are the 10 most deadly mass shootings to have happened this year. The figures also include the death of the perpetrator if they were killed at the scene.

1. Monterey Park, California (21 January) – 12 dead, nine injured
Victims: My Nhan, 65, Ming Wei Ma, 72, Diana Tom, 70, Xiujuan Yu, 57, Lilian Li, 63, Valentino Alvero, 68, Muoi Ung, 67, Hong Jian, 62, Yu Kao, 72, Chia Yau, 76, and Wen Yu, 64.

Huu Can Tran, aged 72, killed 11 people during a Chinese New Year celebration at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park.

Tran was found dead in his vehicle after he fled the scene of an attempted second shooting.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

How the Monterey Park shooting unfolded

2. Allen, Texas (6 May) – nine dead, seven injured
Victims: Not yet named.

A gunman stepped out of a vehicle and began firing outside a Premium Outlets mall in Allen, a suburb of Dallas, sending hundreds of shoppers fleeing in panic.

The gunman, who is believed to have acted alone, was killed by a police officer at the scene, authorities said.

Police respond to a shooting in the Dallas area's Allen Premium Outlets, which authorities said has left multiple people injured in Allen, Texas, U.S. May 6, 2023 in a still image from video. ABC Affiliate WFAA via REUTERS NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT
Image:
The details of the mall shooting are still unfolding

3. Enoch, Utah (4 January) – eight dead
Victims: Tausha Haight, 40, Gail Earl, 78, Tausha’s three daughters, aged seven, 12 and 17, and her two sons, aged four and seven.

A father killed his wife, five children, and his mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself. Michael Haight, 42, shot his wife Tausha, 40, weeks after she filed for divorce.

Police had previously attended the property over reports of a domestic disturbance.

Eight family members were found dead from gunshot wounds at the property in Enoch, Utah. Pic: Salt Lake Tribune via AP
Image:
Eight family members were found dead from gunshot wounds at the property in Enoch, Utah. Pic: Salt Lake Tribune via AP

4. Henryetta, Oklahoma (1 May) – seven dead
Victims: Ivy Webster, 14, Brittany Brewer, 15, Michael Mayo, 15, Tiffany Guess, 13, Rylee Allen, 17, and Holly McFadden, 35.

An Oklahoma sex offender who was freed from prison early shot dead his wife, her three children, and their two friends before killing himself.

The killings raised questions over why Jesse McFadden, 39, was released in the first place. McFadden had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2003 for first-degree rape of a 17-year-old. He was released three years early, in 2020, in part for good behaviour.

A general view of the property where the bodies of seven people, including two missing teens and a convicted sex offender, were found in Henryetta, Oklahoma, U.S. May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Nick Oxford
Image:
The property where the bodies of seven people, including two missing teens and a convicted sex offender, were found

5. Nashville school shooting, Tennessee (27 March) – seven dead, one injured
Victims: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all aged nine, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Mike Hill, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60.

Three adults and three students were killed by Audrey Hale during a shooting at a private Christian school after the former student opened fire.

Hale had a manifesto and detailed maps of the school and entered the building by shooting through its doors.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Nashville shooting 911 calls

6. Half Moon Bay, California (23 January) – seven dead, one injured
Victims: Zhishen Liu, 73, Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, Aixiang Zhang, 74, Qizhong Cheng, 66, Jingzhi Lu, 64, Yetao Bing, 43, Jose Romero Perez, age unknown.

Seven people died after two mass shootings several miles apart in the small Californian coastal city.

Police arrested 67-year-old Chunli Zhao after four people were killed at a farm and another three at a trucking business. The victims included Chinese and Latino farmworkers.

He later told police he carried out the shootings after his supervisor demanded he paid $100 (£81) to repair a damaged forklift truck.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Half Moon Bay shooting suspect arrested

7. Louisville, Kentucky (10 April) – six dead, eight injured
Victims: Tommy Elliott, 63, Juliana Farmer, 57, Jim Tutt, 64, and Josh Barrick, 40, Deanna Eckert, 57.

Five people were killed and seven were injured – including two police officers – after 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon opened fire at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky.

The former bank worker was killed in an exchange of fire with the police.

GUNMAN CONNOR STURGEON SHOWN INSIDE SHOOTING SITE
Image:
Sturgeon inside the shooting site

8. Goshen, California (16 January) – six dead
Victims: Alissa Parraz, 17, and killed her child, Nycholas, Rosa Parraz, 72, Eladio Parraz Jr., 52, Jennifer Analla, 49, Marcos Parraz, 19.

A teenage mother and her 10-month-old baby were fatally shot in the head “assassination style” in an attack that left six people dead in central California.

Police are looking into whether a gang or drug cartel targeted the family, and are on the hunt for two suspects.

The victims of a shooting in Goshen, Calif., are displayed during a news conference, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Visalia, Calif. (Ron Holman/The Times-Delta via AP)
Image:
The victims of a shooting in Goshen. Pic: AP

9. Lake Wales, Florida (2 May) – five dead
Victims: Not yet named.

Al Joseph Stenson, 38, killed a mother and her three children at a motel in central Florida. Stenson was killed after an hours-long stand-off with police.

The children were aged 21, 17 and 11, and while police confirmed they were known to each other, they have not released their names or relationship.

Al Joseph Stenson. Pic: AP
Image:
Al Joseph Stenson. Pic: AP

10. San Jacinto County, Texas (28 April) – five dead
Victims: Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18, Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, and her son Daniel Enrique Laso, eight, and Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21.

Francisco Oropeza, 38, went on the run after he killed five neighbours in a rural Cleveland town. He was eventually found under a laundry pile roughly 20 miles from the incident.

The attacks took place after his neighbours asked him to stop firing off rounds in his garden late at night because a baby was trying to sleep.

A loved one is consoled by others as he arrives at the scene where five people were shot and killed. Pic: AO
Image:
A loved one is consoled by others as he arrives at the scene where five people were shot and killed. Pic: AP

2017’s Las Vegas Shooting

The most deadly mass shooting to date in the US remains the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, when Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on a crowd attending a music festival. There were 60 victims, with Paddock later found dead in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Continue Reading

US

Donald Trump’s tariffs will have consequences for globalisation, the US economy and geopolitics

Published

on

By

Donald Trump's tariffs will have consequences for globalisation, the US economy and geopolitics

For decades, trade and trade policy has been an economic and political backwater – decidedly boring, seemingly uncontroversial. 

Trade was mostly free and getting freer, tariffs were getting lower and lower, and the world was becoming more, not less, globalised.

But alongside those long-term trends, there were some serious consequences.

Trump latest: US president announces sweeping global trade tariffs

Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.

Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.

And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.

More on Donald Trump

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Trump’s tariffs: Ed Conway analysis

He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.

Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.

It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.

Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.

President Trump with his list of tariffs for various countries. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters

And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.

But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.

We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.

To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.

Continue Reading

US

‘A genius actor’, ‘firecracker’, and ‘my friend’: Tributes paid to Top Gun star Val Kilmer

Published

on

By

'A genius actor', 'firecracker', and 'my friend': Tributes paid to Top Gun star Val Kilmer

Actors, directors and celebrity friends have paid tribute to Val Kilmer, after he died aged 65.

The California-born star of Top Gun, Batman and Heat died of pneumonia on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told the Associated Press.

She said Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.

Tributes flooded in after reports broke of the actor’s death, with No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin among the first to share their memories.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Watch: Val Kilmer in his most iconic roles

He wrote on Instagram: “See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those.

“I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there. Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”

Kyle Maclachlan, who co-starred with Kilmer in the 1991 biopic The Doors, wrote on social media: “You’ll always be my Jim. See you on the other side my friend.”

More from Ents & Arts

Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in 1995’s Heat, also paid tribute in a statement, saying: “I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.

“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”

preview image

Heat co-star Danny Trejo also called Kilmer “a great actor, a wonderful person, and a dear friend of mine” on Instagram.

Cher, who once dated the actor, said on X that “U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND… BRILLIANT as Mark Twain, BRAVE here during ur sickness”.

Lifelong friend and director of Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola said: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life.

“He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know – I will always remember him.”

The Top Gun account on X also said it was remembering Kilmer, who starred as Iceman in both the 1986 original and 2022 sequel, and “whose indelible cinematic mark spanned genres and generations”.

Nicolas Cage added that “I always liked Val and am sad to hear of his passing”.

“I thought he was a genius actor,” he said. “I enjoyed working with him on Bad Lieutenant and I admired his commitment and sense of humor.

“He should have won the Oscar for The Doors.”

Continue Reading

US

Elon Musk calls reports he will step back from government role ‘fake news’

Published

on

By

Elon Musk calls reports he will step back from government role 'fake news'

Elon Musk has called reports that he will leave his government role in the coming months “fake news”.

A senior White House official previously told NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, that Donald Trump had discussed the Tesla and X boss transitioning back to the private sector at a cabinet meeting last month.

Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before attending a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket, in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024 . Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Image:
The Tesla boss has headed DOGE since 20 January. File pic: Reuters

After reports emerged of the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was “garbage” and added: “Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”

Mr Musk added in response on X: “Yeah, fake news.”

NBC News reported that the official said Mr Musk would leave at the end of his 130 days as a special government employee.

That would be 30 May, but it is unclear if the billionaire businessman will indeed leave on that date.

Previously, the White House said that as a temporary organisation, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would be terminated on 4 July next year – the 250th anniversary of the US.

More on Donald Trump

👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈

It comes days after Mr Musk said some members of his DOGE team were getting death threats on a daily basis.

Mr Musk had drawn criticism over his efforts to downsize the US federal government.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

‘Elon Musk has got to go’

In just weeks, entire agencies were dismantled, and tens of thousands of workers from the 2.3 million federal workforce have been fired or have agreed to leave their jobs.

A number of lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts over cuts recommended by DOGE.

Continue Reading

Trending