US on way to set record for mass killings

Officers make sixth arrest over four deaths at party shooting in Alabama

LOS ANGELES — The United States is setting a record pace for mass killings this year, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week in 2023.

Eighty-eight lives have been lost in 17 mass killings over 111 days. Each time the killers wielded firearms. Only 2009 was marked by as many such deaths in as short a time.

Among the shootings have been children at a grade school in Nashville, Tennessee, being gunned down on an otherwise ordinary Monday; farmworkers being sprayed with bullets over a workplace grudge in Northern California; and dancers at a ballroom outside Los Angeles being shot dead as they celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year.