Two shootings that authorities say were carried out by elderly Asian men follow a spike in Asian Americans buying guns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This past Saturday night in Monterey Park, a predominantly Asian American city in California, the first Lunar New Year celebration since the pandemic began was kicking off when a gunman entered a ballroom dance hall and opened fire, killing 11 and injuring several more.

The suspect, Huu Can Tran, 72, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound as police closed in on his white van the following day, authorities said.

President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday a bill that is aimed at countering a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the legislation is part of the nation's first step toward unity.

Capping nearly two weeks of talks between Democrats and Republicans, the Senate approved legislation on Thursday to ramp up law enforcement efforts to better protect the Asian American and Pacific Islander community from hate crimes.

The move marks a rare moment of bipartisan unity needed to approve the Senate legislation despite a new political era marked by increasingly bitter party divisions.

The bill, which needed 60 votes for passage in the evenly divided Senate, was approved by a vote of 94 to 1. Only Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley voted no.

Federal investigators have so far not found evidence that clears the high bar for federal hate crime charges against a man who has been accused of killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

Seven of the eight people killed were women; six were of Asian descent. The crime has stitched together stigmas about race, gender, migrant work and sex work.

A moment from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office press conference on Wednesday quickly went viral: Jay Baker, a spokesperson for the police department handling the investigation into the horrific Atlanta spa murders, said that suspect Robert Aaron Long was having a bad day.

"He was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," said Baker.

The eight people who died in a shooting spree by a 21-year-old gunman in Georgia this week have been identified by police and Fulton County officials.

Why it matters: The fact that six of the eight victims are Asian women has left Asians and Pacific Islanders across America fearful and alarmed.

Here is what we know about the victims so far:

The Fulton County Medical Examiner on Friday released the names of the other four victims: Soon C. Park, 74; Hyun J. Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong A. Yue, 63.

Prominent Asian American lawmakers, scholars and advocates, including actor and producer Daniel Dae Kim, testified Thursday on the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The hearing followed a string of hate crimes against Asian Americans, as well as three shootings at Atlanta-area spas on Tuesday in which eight people were killed. Six of the victims were Asian women.

On Tuesday, a gunman killed eight people at three different spas in Atlanta—Young’s Asian Massage, Gold Spa, and Aromatherapy Spa. Six of the eight victims were Asian women, making it difficult not to connect the killings to the anti-Asian attacks that have consumed the country over the past year due in part to racist rhetoric around the coronavirus pandemic. Asian women and elders have suffered the brunt of the violence. Local officials charged Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, with four counts of murder and one count of assault on Wednesday, and he is the main suspect.

Asian Americans were subjected to nearly 3,800 hate incidents over the last year, according to a new report released by Stop AAPI Hate. These included reports of harassment, shunning, slur, and physical violence, illustrating the wave of violence the Asian community has faced throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

In the late 1980s, a young journalist named Jason DeParle moved in with a Filipino family in Manila to learn more about global poverty. Now a veteran New York Times reporter and author of the 2004 book American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare, DeParle followed the family he met as they have grown to include more than four dozen people over three generations, spread across the globe as migrant workers.