The shooting happened as patrons gathered for spaghetti night at Cook’s Corner bar
Four people have been killed and six others hurt in a shooting incident at a biker bar in southern California.
The gunman, identified on Thursday as a retired police officer, was among the four who died at Cook’s Corner in Orange County.
Two of the six who were injured are in critical condition, county fire chief Brian Fennessy said.
There have been more than 400 mass shootings in 2023 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The shooting took place at 19:00 local time (02:00 GMT) as the bar was offering an $8 (£6.30) spaghetti night and a rock music show, which were advertised on the bar’s Facebook page.
It is thought the incident may have started as a domestic incident between the gunman and his wife, CBS News reported citing a police source.
On Thursday, authorities named the suspect as John Snowling, a retired sergeant who worked with the Ventura Police Department in California until 2014.
At least one weapon was recovered from the scene, police said.
Orange County supervisor Katrina Foley said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that she was “heartbroken to hear of another senseless mass shooting, this time in our own backyard”.
Child gun deaths in the United States have hit a record high, according to a new study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mortality database, the study published on Monday in the AAP’s journal Pediatrics found that 4,752 children died from gun-related injuries in 2021, the latest year for which data was available, up from 4,368 in 2020 and 3,390 in 2019.
Gun violence has been the number one cause of death for children in the United States since 2020.
The study was published as Tennessee lawmakers opened a special session on public safety after a Nashville school shooting earlier this year that killed three children and three teachers.
Annie Andrews, a South Carolina pediatrician and gun violence prevention researcher who was not involved in the study, said that when she became a doctor, “I never imagined I would take care of so many children with bullet holes in them.
Students of Oxford High School and other schools in the area, along with community members, gather for a candlelight prayer vigil at Bridgewood Church to pray for the community, a day after a deadly shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, in Clarkston, Michigan, U.S., December 1, 2021. REUTERS/Seth Herald/File Photo
“But the fact of the matter is, in every children’s hospital across this country, there are children in the pediatric intensive care units suffering from firearm injuries.”
The study further showed that Black children accounted for around 67% of firearm homicides while white children made up about 78% of gun-assisted suicides.
Iman Omer, a junior at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and an anti-gun violence advocate with Students Demand Action, said the study’s findings were devastating but unsurprising.
“Every year, I know that 128 children and teens in Tennessee die by guns,” Omer said as she headed to the state’s capitol Tuesday to join protesters who have been demanding tougher gun laws.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who knew two of the teachers killed in the Nashville shooting, had asked lawmakers in the special session to bolster so called red flag laws aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of people deemed to be a threat. He has faced resistance from his fellow Republicans, who control the statehouse.
