Harris visits Monterey Park to fulfill with victims’ households

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Monterey Park, California, on Wednesday to fulfill with victims’ households days after a mass shooter there killed 11 and wounded at the least 9 others at a Lunar New 12 months celebration inside a dance studio.

Harris visited Star Dance Studio to mourn the lack of the victims of the Monterey Park taking pictures, expressing the administration’s “deepest condolences and sorrows for the violent and tragic and ineffective factor that occurred” there.

The vp, carrying a big bouquet of Yellow lilies and white roses, took time every of the 11 memorials arrange on the dance studio in honor of the victims.

After paying her respects, the Vice President laid the bouquet down, and walked to the press, delivering quick remarks– urging that the nation take motion to handle the all-too-common tragedies.

“You understand we have already had in our nation this yr — already, we’re in January — It is estimated over 40 mass killings already. And tragically, we preserve saying the identical factor. I’ve had the unlucky expertise of visiting many of those websites, generally inside days of a bloodbath like this. We’ll all the time, as a compassionate nation, mourn for the loss and pray for many who survive of their get better. However we should additionally require that leaders of countries who’ve the flexibility and the facility and the duty to do one thing, that they act,” Harris stated.

Harris praised California for his or her work on sensible gun security legal guidelines, however harassed that Congress should take motion for the nation as a complete, and “have braveness to do the fitting factor.”

Harris was requested if she believed the present Congress might act on gun reform and gave a pointy reply.

“They completely can,” Harris stated. “Can they do one thing? Sure. Ought to they do one thing? Sure. Will they do one thing? That’s the place all of us should communicate up and communicate to our elected representatives about what we now have a proper to count on that they’ll do for the — within the curiosity of the protection, the safety and the well-being of individuals like these whose lives have been ended right here and other people round our nation. They will sure.”

In Monterey Park, Brandon Tsay disarmed the shooter. Tsay later informed ABC Information he realized “everyone would die” if he did not take management of the scenario, including, “One thing came to visit me.”

On Monday, seven folks have been killed in Half Moon Bay, in a mass taking pictures throughout two farms, authorities stated, with office violence believed to be the motive. And solely hours later in Oakland, at the least one particular person was killed and 7 extra injured in one other mass taking pictures at a fuel station.

Congress broke an almost 30-year stalemate final yr by passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the primary main piece of federal gun reform to clear each chambers since what’s referred to as the 1993 Brady invoice. The BSCA was crafted within the aftermath of the Robb Elementary Faculty bloodbath in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 younger youngsters and two lecturers.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, alongside Connecticut Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, on Monday reintroduced a federal assault weapons ban and laws that might elevate the minimal buy age for assault-style weapons to 21. However that laws is unlikely to maneuver ahead.

Harris spoke in regards to the Monterey Park taking pictures at a Sunday look in Florida to mark 50 years since Roe v. Wade, saying, “One more neighborhood has been torn aside by mindless gun violence.”

“All of us on this room and in our nation perceive this violence should cease,” she stated then. “President Biden and I and our administration will proceed to supply full help to the native authorities as we be taught extra.”

In response to the Gun Violence Archive, the U.S. has seen extra mass shootings than days in 2023.

ABC Information’ Molly Nagle contributed to this report.