The Uvalde massacre shakes a country where civilians handle 393 million weapons and violence far exceeds the saturation point of society
The idea of nineteen schoolchildren and two teachers trapped defenseless in an elementary school classroom in Uvalde (Texas) together with their executor, a young man from his own community a few years older, with time to change the ammunition cartridges, unmoved by the screams of terror around 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 victims of past school shootings, shocked journalists and public figures; the president’s remarks, the heated debate over weapons, and the familiar public exchange of political accusations and excuses.
The similarity of violent shootings in schools always reveals the same recurring factor: how two assault weapons reach the hands of a boy who has 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 not an enigma, but the impossibility of changing the laws goes beyond the constrained political space. The attachment to weapons is part of the cultural and historical umbilical cord that connects national identity with its origin as a State.
Civil society, emotionally exhausted, remains hostage to the political power of the interests of arms manufacturers. A social weariness perfectly embodied in the absolute frankness of the coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr, whose team was playing in Texas on the day of the shooting, a few kilometers from the Uvalde tragedy. During the press conference, the coach refused to talk about the game and shouted in exasperation with a fist on the table: “When are we going to do something? It’s pathetic!”.
In reality, fifty Republican members of the Senate are ruthlessly preventing the country from emerging from the domestic terror that, every week or so, weapons in the hands of unstable individuals inflict on the population. For two years they have been blocking a basic legislation approved by the lower house on the review of criminal records for the purchase of weapons. Those responsible for the blockade, in line with the all-powerful weapons lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), offer condolences and prayers with each multiple murder, but the will of 90% of Americans goes through the establishment of controls as a basic requirement for the acquisition of weapons.
In response to massacres like the one in Uvalde, justifications such as the presumed mental instability of the violent or the right to self-defense are adduced 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 fewer: arm teachers, arm everyone, as made clear Friday night at the opening of the NRA convention in Houston with Donald Trump as the keynote speaker.
unstoppable growth
212 mass shootings have occurred in the US so far this year. The worst have occurred in Buffalo, with 18 deaths, and in Uvalde, with 19 children and two teachers killed.
The United States stands as the country with the highest number of weapons per capita in the world. The numbers talk for themselves. There are more than 400 million pistols, rifles or war rifles in the hands of the Police, the Army and civilians. These handle the majority: 393 million. In other words, there are 120 firearms for every 100 citizens, although it is an average.
Because reality indicates that half of all 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 the one who has five pistols or shotguns in his house. Barely 22% of owners only have one weapon.
The image of the victims
With all this weaponry, 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 yesterday in the media whether it is beginning to be convenient to show the images of the victims; an exhibition that contravenes privacy and sensitivity, but that many voices consider that it would promote awareness against weapons, in the same way that the photographs of civilians killed in Ukraine have served the international community to raise awareness of the hell of war. Forensics have had to use DNA techniques to identify many of the 19 children killed by Salvador Ramos at Robb Elementary School due to the destruction wrought by bullets on their bodies. Horrific.
The point is that the cult of arms, a constitutionally guaranteed right, is a cultural and political characteristic unique to the United States, deeply embedded in the country’s identity, which sets it apart from the rest of the world. In armed America, revolvers and rifles are everywhere. Easily accessible, they can be purchased at popular stores such as Walmart, weekend markets, by mail or on digital platforms. And also in a very fruitful black market.
Many are acquired legally by responsible people, and others fall into the hands of post-adolescents, citizens with criminal records and, directly, psychopaths with lethal intentions. They are the ones who on numerous occasions enter a shop, a bar or a supermarket and shoot indiscriminately at those in front of them.
This deep roots is linked to the origins of the nation, and to a particular notion of its spirit of freedom; of individual and collective freedom. The history of weapons in the US is an intrinsic part of the social fabric and long predates the creation of the State. The inhabitants of the first settlements were required by law to possess weapons to ensure the collective and personal defense of the colonies.
In the hands of civilians
The prototypical home gun cabinet consists of five weapons, although 3% of the population have large arsenals at home
At the time of independence, the colonists themselves became the first armed defense of the Thirteen Colonies, both against the Indians and against the Army of their own king. And so, the right of civilians to defend themselves -already reflected in the English common laws- was naturally introduced in the Constitution of 1787 and embodied in the Second Amendment.
Debated ad nauseam and subject to judicial interpretation, the constitutional text includes other provisions, but they are frequently ignored and establish that the defense of the State will be regulated by law. Instead, the so-called judicial ‘originalists’ and extreme right-wing activists defend a fundamentalist interpretation of the amendment, completely divorced from contemporary reality.
The political predator
The fascination with weapons permeates the entire narrative of the construction of national identity and establishes a common thread from its origins to the present, passing through the mythology of the Wild West of the eighteenth century. But the belligerence that shakes the country is much more recent. The relatively modest organization of hunters and gun enthusiasts of the past has become one of the most powerful political predators in the United States in the last thirty years.
Two landmark Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and 2010 vested the Second Amendment with extraordinary power by restricting the state’s authority to limit gun ownership. The sentences unleashed a series of legal reforms that strengthened the powerful lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA for its acronym in English).
This organization has relentlessly embedded itself in the political space, funding candidates, mostly Republicans, and destroying any reform initiatives in the courts. It has radicalized even its solid base with speeches where it affirms that the individual and his weapon are the shield against political and personal aggression, and reinforced the stereotype of the white American, defender of the family, property, individuality and freedom. Instead, the anti-gun activist is an angry and resentful guy. Pure NRA philosophy.
Legal interstices against the impunity of manufacturers
The National Rifle Association has a tendency in each of its manifestations, such as the annual convention that it celebrates this weekend in Houston, to present itself as a victim and as a hero in the uncompromising defense of an atavistic right such as the right to bear arms. He resorts to a speech directed at the stomach of his supporters and that tries to sow fear in the rest of society: that, if this right is lost, all the other individual and political prerogatives and freedoms of citizens would be put at risk.
In this scenario, gun manufacturers are protected from legal or civil remedies when their merchandise is used in a violent crime. Even so, modest advances in legislation make their way as in the case of the decision made in 2019 by the Supreme Court of the State of Connecticut in favor of the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school, the shooting that cost their lives. 20 children under the age of 8, and 7 other people, including the murderer’s mother.
Taking advantage of a legal loophole, the lawyers were able to sue the Remington house alleging that the manufacturer directed its advertising to young people and adolescents by appealing to their masculinity to attract them to automatic weapons.
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