The Uvalde massacre shakes up a country where civilians wield 393 million weapons and violence exceeds society’s saturation point.
The idea of nineteen schoolchildren and two teachers locked up defenseless in an elementary school class in Uvalde, Texas, with their executor, a young man from his own community a few years older, with time to change the ammunition cartridges, unmoved by the cries of fear of him, it is incomprehensible. The chilling details of the tragedy are followed by the usual parade of vigils, minutes of silence and funerals; traumatized parents of school shooting victims, shocked journalists and public figures; the president’s comments, the heated debate over weapons and the well-known public exchange of political accusations and apologies.
The likeness of violent school shootings always reveals the same recurring factor: how two assault weapons reach the hands of a boy who just turned 18 in a country where buying a simple beer is only possible after 21 years. The answer to this question – easy access to weapons – is no mystery, but the impossibility of changing the laws extends beyond limited political space. The attachment to weapons is part of the cultural-historical umbilical cord that links national identity to its origin as a state.
Civil society, emotionally exhausted, remains hostage to the political power of arms manufacturers’ interests. A social fatigue perfectly embodied in the absolute candor of NBA Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, whose team was playing in Texas on the day of the shooting, a few miles from the Uvalde tragedy. During the press conference, the coach refused to talk about the game and shouted angrily on the table with a fist: “When are we going to do something? It is pathetic!”.
In reality, fifty Republican Senate members ruthlessly prevent the country from emerging from the domestic terror inflicted weekly or so on the population by weapons at the hands of unstable individuals. For two years now, they have blocked basic legislation approved by the House of Representatives on the revision of criminal records for the purchase of weapons. Those responsible for the blockade, in line with the almighty gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), offer their condolences and prayers on every multiple homicide, but the will of 90% of Americans goes through instituting controls as a fundamental requirement for the acquisition of weapons.
In response to massacres such as the one in Uvalde, justifications such as the supposed mental instability of violent individuals or the right to self-defense have been advanced as an argument for any post-adolescent to be able to carry a gun. And solutions are being offered that only add more weapons, not less: weapon the teachers, weapon the whole world, as it emerged Friday night at the opening of the NRA convention in Houston with Donald Trump as keynote speaker.
The United States is the country with the highest number of guns per capita in the world. The numbers speak for themselves. There are over 400 million pistols, rifles or war rifles in the hands of police, military and civilians. These process the majority: 393 million. In other words, there are 120 firearms for every 100 civilians, although it’s an average.
Because the reality shows that half of them (about 200 million) are owned by 3% of the population, who have a real arsenal on their property. The typical profile of the armed American citizen is one who has five handguns or shotguns in the house. Barely 22% of owners have only one weapon.
With all these weapons, there are 100,000 deaths a year in the country, including homicides, suicides and accidents. Four days after the Uvalde massacre, experts and commentators discussed in the media yesterday whether it would be useful to show the images of the victims; an exhibition that violates privacy and sensitivity, but which many voices believe would raise awareness against weapons, just as the photographs of civilians killed in Ukraine have served the international community to raise awareness of the hell of war. Forensics has had to use DNA techniques to identify many of the 19 children killed by Salvador Ramos at Robb Elementary School as a result of the destruction by bullets on their bodies. Awful.
The point is that the cult of arms, a constitutionally guaranteed right, is a cultural and political feature unique to the United States, deeply entrenched in the country’s identity, setting it apart from the rest of the world. In armed America, revolvers and guns are everywhere. They are easily accessible and can be purchased at popular stores such as Walmart, weekend markets, by mail, or on digital platforms. And also on a very fertile black market.
Many are acquired legally by responsible people, and others fall into the hands of post-adolescents, civilians with criminal records and, directly, psychopaths with deadly intent. It is they who, on countless occasions, walk into a shop, bar or supermarket and shoot indiscriminately at those in front of them.
These deep roots are connected with the origin of the nation, and with a certain notion of its spirit of freedom; of individual and collective freedom. The history of guns in the US is an intrinsic part of the social fabric and predates the founding of the state. The inhabitants of the early settlements were required by law to possess weapons to ensure the collective and personal defense of the colonies.
At the time of independence, the settlers themselves became the first armed defense of the Thirteen Colonies, both against the Indians and against the army of their own king. And so, of course, the right of citizens to defend themselves—already reflected in English common law—was introduced in the Constitution of 1787 and enshrined in the Second Amendment.
The constitutional text, which has been debated to the bone and subject to judicial interpretation, contains other provisions, but these are often ignored, stating that the defense of the state will be governed by law. Instead, the so-called judicial “originalists” and far-right activists defend a fundamentalist interpretation of the amendment, completely detached from contemporary reality.
The fascination with weapons permeates the whole story of the construction of national identity, laying a common thread from the beginning to the present, running through the mythology of the Wild West of the eighteenth century. But the combativeness that is shaking the country is much more recent. The relatively modest organization of hunters and weapons enthusiasts of the past has become one of the most powerful political predators in the United States over the past thirty years.
Two landmark Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and 2010 granted the Second Amendment extraordinary power by limiting the state’s power to restrict gun ownership. The verdicts unleashed a series of legal reforms that bolstered the powerful lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA for its English acronym).
This organization has relentlessly embedded itself in the political space, funding candidates, mostly Republicans, and crushing all reform initiatives in the courts. It has even radicalized its solid foundation with speeches affirming that the individual and his weapon are the shield against political and personal aggression, reinforcing the stereotype of the white American, defender of family, property, individuality and freedom. Instead, the anti-gun activist is an angry and hateful man. Pure NRA philosophy.
The National Rifle Association tends to present itself in each of its manifestations, such as the annual convention it is celebrating this weekend in Houston, as a victim and a hero in the fervent defense of an atavistic right like the right to bear arms. He resorts to a speech that is aimed at the stomachs of his supporters and tries to sow fear in the rest of society: that if this right is lost, all other individual and political privileges and freedoms of citizens will be jeopardized.
In this scenario, gun manufacturers are protected from legal or civil remedies when their merchandise is used in a violent crime. Still, there are modest advances in legislation, such as in the case of the 2019 decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court in favor of the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school, the shooting that took their lives. . 20 children under 8 and 7 other people, including the killer’s mother.
Taking advantage of a legal loophole, the lawyers were able to sue the Remington House for targeting young people and adolescents by appealing to their masculinity to attract them to automatic weapons.
Source: La Verdad
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