Brandon Tsay was present at the State of the Union address on February 7, 2022. The 26-year-old has been hailed as a hero for disarming a shooter who killed 11 people in a mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, and was invited by President Joe Biden.
As he began a section of his address in which he pleaded with lawmakers to permanently outlaw assault weapons, Biden referenced Tsay by name.
One of many mass shootings that took place in California in January was the rampage at Monterey Park on January 21. Seven people were slain at Half Moon Bay two days after that incident, and another person was killed in a mass shooting in Oakland.
California is ranked No. 1 in the nation for having the strongest gun restrictions, according to gun control campaigners Everytown for Gun Safety, and has over 100 gun control measures, earning it a “A” rating from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Biden introduces the parents of Tyre Nichols and talks about the plight of systemic racism and police brutality pic.twitter.com/zx1wuMlSax
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 8, 2023
The solution is subtle and intricate. First, tighter gun control regulations do result in fewer fatal shootings. This holds true for unintentional shootings, suicides, and homicides. In California, there are 8.5 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people each year, compared to 13.7 nationwide.
The gun laws of other states, however, have an impact on the effectiveness of state restrictions. It is commonly known that there is cross-state trafficking in firearms for both legal and illegal purposes, and that firearms used in crimes are more likely to come from states with laxer gun laws than from those with stricter regulations.
The United States is the most heavily armed civilian population in the world, with at least 393 million firearms, according to a 2018 research. In light of the surge of pandemic-related gun purchases that began in 2020, that figure is probably substantially higher.
According to research, narratives on gun policies frequently center on mass shootings while downplaying less severe but more frequent gun-related injuries and fatalities, like homicide and suicide. One of us discovered that from 2000 to 2017, gun control organizations mentioned mass shootings in 30% of their blogs, emails, and news releases, as well as in 11% of their Facebook postings. They paid a lot less attention to all other forms of firearm violence.
