A steady barrage of mass slaughter is underway as Americans come out of three years of isolation, stress and infighting during the pandemic.

Eleven people were killed as they celebrated the Lunar New Year at a popular dance hall for older Asian Americans. In an attack that killed five generations, a teen mother and her baby were shot in the head. In the classroom, a 6-year-old shoots his first-grade teacher. The list goes on and on.

"We've been through a lot in the last few years, and seeing case after case of mass violence in the media is just overwhelming," Apryl Alexander, an associate professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said. "When is this going to end?"

The carnage in California over the last eight days, where the dance hall victims were among two dozen people killed in three recent attacks, brought back painful memories for families of last year's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Several Uvalde families and parents travelled more than three hours to their state Capitol on Tuesday to renew calls for stricter gun laws, despite the fact that they have little chance of winning over the Republican-controlled Legislature.

On January 23, 2022 — a year ago Monday — the United States experienced its first deadly gun rampage of the year. Six mass killings had claimed 39 lives by the same date this year, according to a database of mass killings maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University.

"Every day, people die. "This should not be happening," Veronica Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter Tess was one of the 19 children and two teachers killed in Uvalde, said. "If it means coming every week, then we'll do it until we see a difference."

Mass shootings are often blamed on hatred toward other communities, grievances within a group or secrets within families. Sometimes it's not clear whether a grudge is even part of the equation. "There was no apparent conflict between the parties," Yakima Police Chief Matt Murray said after three people were shot dead at a convenience store.

Gun sales in the U.S. hit historic highs in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, the economy stalled, and protests erupted. The surge largely continued the following year, with sales spiking by 75% the same month that a mob attacked the Capitol. Experts believe there are 393 million guns in private hands across the United States.

Some Americans claim that they are not safe anywhere. According to the American Psychological Association, a third avoid certain places as a result, despite the fact that the majority of Americans are stressed. Some potential solutions, such as teaching conflict resolution skills in schools or rethinking our societal views on masculinity, appear to have little appetite. Socioemotional learning is simply teaching children how to recognize and express their emotions.

These kids are going to turn into adults. If they don't know how to handle conflict, we're going to see unfortunate events like this happen, Alexander says. The database shows 2,793 people have lost their lives in mass killings in the United States since 2006. The recent wave of violence follows a spike in 2022, when the U.S. recorded 42 mass killings.

The carnage began on January 4, when a Utah man, who had been investigated but never charged in connection with a child abuse complaint filed in 2020, shot and killed his wife, her mother, and their five children before killing himself.

Even gun violence that claims few or no lives can shock the conscience. This was the case in Virginia earlier this month when a 6-year-old shot and injured his teacher in front of his classmates. Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones said he could hardly believe it. In addition, two adolescent students were killed in an Iowa school shooting on Monday.

"Our hearts are broken," San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Dave Pine said Monday. Eleven people were killed and nine others were injured in the Monterey Park shooting on Saturday night. Just hours after the Lunar New Year celebrations, a 72-year-old man opened fire at a dance studio. The next day, as police approached his van, the gunman committed suicide.

Before people across the state could process that horror, seven farmworkers were shot and killed near San Francisco, in the picturesque coastal community of Half Moon Bay. A 66-year-old coworker is in custody.

For some, the violence is linked to an alienating period in U.S. history that has isolated people from each other and chipped away at the ability to cope with life’s travails.

Loneliness, addiction, and gun violence are some of the symptoms of a "social recession that's literally bankrupting our souls," said the Rev. Jonathan Lee Walton, the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. According to Jonathan Lee Walton, social media, remote work, and virtual reality are morally deficient substitutes for human connection. He claims that "we are normalizing diseases of despair" such as loneliness and addiction.