Essential California Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, July 30, and I’m writing from Los Angeles. Before 5:30 p.m. Sunday — as the final day of an annual food festival that had drawn tens of thousands was wrapping up — Gilroy was still a place known for garlic, if you knew Gilroy at all. It took just under a minute and a semiautomatic rifle for a 19-year-old man to take three lives and transform Gilroy into the latest byword in an unholy litany: the names of communities brutalized by mass shootings. In news both devastating and deadeningly unsurprising, a garlic festival had joined the long list of quotidian places (bar, movie theater, newsroom, yoga studio, houses of worship, too many campuses to count) where one can take a bullet at random in America. The Gilroy shooting comes less than a year after the massacre at the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, and just months after a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in the San Diego suburb of Poway. Two children, a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were among those killed Sunday in Gilroy. The 6-year-old boy’s name was Stephen Romero, but some family members dubbed him “El Romantico” for his polished manners and fondness for pressed button-down shirts. “He wouldn’t leave the house unless he had cologne on,” his uncle told the San Francisco Chroniclefrom the driveway of the boy’s San Jose home. Romero’s mother and grandmother were both injured in the shooting. Friends of the boy’s family have set up a GoFundMe page to assist with expenses. Keyla Salazar, the 13-year-old victim, was also of San Jose. She would have turned 14 this Sunday, and her mom and stepdad were planning to get her a puppy for her birthday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Officials at Keuka College in New York identified the third victim as school graduate Trevor Irby, 25, of Romulus, N.Y. Irby had been living in Santa Cruz with his girlfriend, according to a memorial GoFundMe page set up by his former college housemates. Gilroy police officers were patrolling the festival at the time that the gunman, Santino William Legan, started firing. Three officers began shooting at him less than a minute after he opened fire and he was fatally shot by police. By the time the shooting stopped, four people — including the gunman — were dead, and at least 12 others were injured. California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and the military-style semiautomatic rifle used by the gunman is illegal to own in California. Authorities say that the gunman legally purchased the weapon this year in Nevada. His motive remains unclear, though he did use his Instagram account earlier in the day on Sunday to promote a book that has been tied to white supremacist movements. More coverage on the shooting: » What we know about the shooting suspect. Los Angeles Times » The Gilroy shooting happened despite strict California gun laws. What more can state lawmakers do? Sacramento Bee » The Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting has thrust Nevada’s gun laws into the spotlight. Reno Gazette Journal » The creator of “Dilbert” has been widely denounced for using the shooting to push his new app on social media. San Francisco Chronicle » “Everything was surreal.” A photographer for the Gilroy Dispatchreflects on tragedy and the national media invading his small town, and on being both a community member and local press. Poynter