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This is Our Body Politics. I'm Farai Chidea. Today, just an advisory that this show mentions suicide and multiple types of gun violence.

California is considered one of the states with the toughest gun control laws, but last month it witnessed multiple mass shootings, two of which were targeted at Asian American Pacific Islander communities

in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay just days apart from each other. With each mass shooting,

we're left wondering, why does this keep happening and how do we change it? To help us understand

the crisis of mass shootings, I'm talking with Jennifer Massia, a senior newswriter and founding

staffer at The Trace.

Jennifer has spent the past decade covering community gun violence, the growing role of guns

in public life, and the intersection of domestic violence and guns. She also leads the

Ask the Trace series tracking news developments on the gun violence beat. Thanks for coming on the show,

Jennifer. Thanks for having on the show, Jennifer.

Thanks for having me. So there have been nearly 50-50 mass shootings in the first few weeks of 23. First of all, what makes a shooting a mass shooting? The definition that is most widely accepted now is the definition used by a site I rely on

every day called Gun Violence Archive.

They're a non-profit outfit of number crunchers, and they track shootings in the news.

So what they consider to be a mass shooting is four people shot, whether they're wounded or

killed. And the reason they use that definition, and gun rights advocates argue with it a lot,

...