Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Jan 31.
Last week, I wrote about the normalized cadence of coverage in the aftermath of tragedies like the ones in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay. One aspect I didn’t mention was that often — but not always — gun sales spike in the weeks after a mass shooting.
In 2019, medical researchers in California reviewed 20 years’ worth of monthly gun sales data from the state to understand how mass shootings affect the firearms market.
Their analysis “suggests that the most deadly mass shootings have continued to occur in close proximity to the spike in gun sales,” researchers said.
Experts theorize that two types of gun buyers drive those spikes, both motivated to some degree by fear. One group believes that having a gun will prevent them from becoming a shooting victim. For others, the purchase comes out of a desire to buy firearms before potential new laws make that more difficult.
And for California’s Asian American population, two mass shootings within 48 hours add new layers of fear at a time the community has already experienced a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.
My colleagues Jeong Park, Hailey Branson-Potts and Anh Do spoke with community members thinking about buying guns, along with advocates on both sides of the entrenched gun divide.
“For a small but growing number of Asian Americans, owning a gun seems like the only way to feel safe,” they wrote.
Research shows that Asian Americans have been buying more firearms in the last few years, along with other racial groups. A national survey of gun retailers conducted by an industry trade group showed 30% of respondents reported an uptick in Asian American customers.
Asian Americans remain the least common gun-owning demographic, according to the Pew Research Center and other surveys. White men are by far the most common.
The gun industry has also invested more marketing toward Asian Americans in recent years.
Speaking to my…