'Don't be numb to this': Battling despair over gun deaths

Women pause at a memorial at a vigil honoring the victims of a shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023, in Monterey Park, Calif. A gunman killed multiple people late Saturday amid Lunar New Year celebrations in the predominantly Asian American community. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)

Increasingly it feels like America is at war with itself.

In New Orleans, just days into the new year, a 14-year-old girl was shot to death, along with her father and uncle. A few days after, in a Virginia classroom, a six-year-old boy pulled out a gun and shot his first-grade teacher.

That news was eclipsed by a mass shooting at a California dance studio last weekend that left 11 people dead. A day later and a few hundred miles away, a farmworker opened fire in a beachside town, killing seven coworkers. Three more were killed and four wounded in a shooting at a short-term rental home in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood early Saturday.