Gunman kills 5 in US, then himself

A man went on a shooting rampage in California on Wednesday, killing five people including his wife, before taking his own life.

The shooting at multiple locations in Bakersfield in central California was possibly "a domestic violence incident," said Lieutenant Mark King of the Kern County sheriff's office.

Police received their first call at 5:19 pm before responding to the first location, a trucking company, where the rampage began.

Three people were killed there and the shooter, armed with a large caliber hand gun, fled.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood told reporters that the suspect first shot a man at the trucking company and then killed his own wife. He chased a person who had witnessed the shooting and killed that person, too.

He then fled and shot a couple at a house.

Officers gave chase and the suspect pulled into a business, got out of the car and shot himself, he said.

It was the latest chapter of America's epidemic of gun violence.

Americans make up only four percent of the global population but they own 40 percent of the world's firearms, according to a recent study published by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.