The first he did Salvador Rolando Ramos after turning 18, he bought two AR-15 assault rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition at a specialty gun store outside of Uvalde, Texas. That was last week. Four days later and after telegraphing his intentions through social networks, he shot his grandmother, with whom he lived, in the face and then went to the robb elementary schoolwhere he cold-bloodedly murdered 19 fourth-grade children, between the ages of 9 and 10, as well as two teachers, before dying in a confrontation with the authorities.
What led him to commit one of the worst massacres in US history (eighth deadliest since this type of counting has been carried out), is still a mystery. Various sources who knew him speak of a lonely young man who had been a victim of bullying at school and came from a family with a history of drug abuse.
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But apart from that, this new and incomprehensible tragedy that mourns the United States has once again put on the table a drama that seems to have no end: that of the shootings in educational centers and the already well-known debate on the control of weapons andn a country where anyone can buy them even in a grocery store. Although these types of massacres are not the most common, they have been on the rise in recent years and claiming more and more victims.
Almost 5 massacres per month this year
In pulling up their numbers, federal authorities don’t make a specific count of school shootings. But media such as The Washington Post and The New York Times have been collecting data on this phenomenon for several years. Particularly from the Columbine, Colorado massacre in 1999, when two teenagers killed 13 children at a high school. A shooting that is considered the origin of this wave, since it was from there that more cases began to appear.
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Since then 336 shootings have been documented in which 185 children have died and at least 369 have been injured. In total, says the Post, 311,000 minors have been exposed to this type of violence in 331 schools in the country.
But what causes more alarm is the notable increase in recent years. Between 2009 and 2017 the average figure was 10 incidents per year. Thereafter, excluding 2020, when most schools closed due to the covid-19 pandemic, cases skyrocketed to 33 per year. In fact, 2021 registered the highest figure in history: 42 cases. And 2022 looks just as serious since there have already been 24 incidents in just these five months.
According to the Post’s analysis, the average age of the assailants is between 15 and 16 years, and in 85 percent of the cases the masters belonged to parents or relatives. Motivations are of all kinds. From a 6-year-old boy who killed a classmate because he didn’t like her to a 15-year-old girl who murdered several after a love affair.
To give dimension to the scandalous figures, it is enough to compare the case of the United States with the rest of the world. Although there is no single study that records all school shootings on the planet, there are several on industrialized nations. In one conducted by a team of CNN analysts in 2018, the number of school shootings in the US is 57 times higher than that of all developed countries combined.
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Even including developing nations, where incidents have occurred, the numbers pale in comparison to the Americans. Mexico, the country that had the most cases between 2008 and 2018, added 8, followed by South Africa, with 6, and India with 4. That is why many describe this phenomenon as a particularly American crisis.
Two shootings a day
The problem, of course, is not exclusive to schools. In fact, massacres and shootings, which some define as cases where at least four people are killed or injured, are almost the daily bread in this country.
According to the Archive for Violence with Firearms, an organization that documents this type of incident, only so far in 2022 there have been 215 episodes with these characteristics. That is, on average more than one daily. And, as in the case of school massacres, the figures are generally on the rise.
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In 2021, for example, there were 693 shootings (almost two daily), the highest number recorded in decades. From 610 in 2020 and 417 in 2019. Numbers that double the average of the previous decade.
Statistics that correlate with the firearm deaths, which are also fired. In total, last year more than 45,000 people died in this way, of which 21,000 were homicides and 24,000 suicides. This is the highest number of murders since at least 1968 and an increase of 50 percent compared to 5 years ago, according to a report by the PEW Research Center.
more guns than people
Why these types of incidents are so common in the United States is something that has been studied for years and is the subject of intense controversy in the country. But most analysts agree that there is a direct link to the number of weapons circulating among the civilian population and how easy it is to acquire them.
According to a Small Arms Survey (SAS) study, no other country in the world has more weapons than inhabitants, as it happens in the United States. This firm, based in Switzerland, maintains that there are more than 393 million weapons in circulation in the superpower, that is, 120 for every 100 inhabitants. To put it in context, the second country on the list is Yemen, which has been experiencing an armed conflict for years, where the rate is 53 per 100 inhabitants.
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According to SAS, Despite the fact that the United States represents only 4.4 percent of the planet’s population, its civilians own 46 percent of all the weapons in the world. That is why the conclusion of a recent study written by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, is not surprising, in which he affirms that since 1966, 31 percent of all massacres or shootings committed in the world have been perpetrated by Americans despite the fact that They only represent a fraction of the world’s population.
Despite the evidence, conservatives – mostly Republicans – and defenders of the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms in the United States, insist that the problem is not the volume of these lethal devices that exists today among the civilian population and that crime does not stop by limiting their access.
For the Democrats, on the other hand, it is urgent to establish more controls on the sale of weapons. Among them, expanding the background check that is done before a sale to a citizen, limiting access to automatic assault rifles like the one used by Ramos in Uvalde, and reducing ammunition capacity at suppliers.
In any case: an old controversy that is usually reactivated every time a tragedy of this magnitude occurs and that will now be much more intense because the victims were children.
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powerful interests
In a speech to the nation, President Joe Biden asked to confront the lobby of firearms producers and distributors, alluding to the large amounts of money that the arms industry spends lobbying Congress to prevent the establishment of limits . But Republicans have given clear indications that they will object to any change that restricts the scope of the Second Amendment.
Something very similar to what happened in 2013 after the massacre of 20 children between the ages of 4 and 6 at Sandy Hook, a school in Connecticut. Despite universal condemnation, Republicans ended up blocking a bill approved by Democrats in the House of Representatives that would have strengthened the background check mechanism.
And although this time the pressure is enormous to try again, the result will probably be the same. Republicans have little interest in joining measures that are seen as an attack on the Second Amendment, a very contentious issue among the party’s bases, whose majority is of rural origin. Above all, when the mid-term legislative elections are approaching, where what counts is the local and not the national vote. This despite the fact that much of the country (55 percent, according to the average of polls) is in favor of stricter controls and will probably be even more so after the Uvalde massacre.
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The safest thing, of course, is that they pay political costs for opposing. But that cost, in his calculation, is lower than that of challenging the party’s bases.
Regardless of this dynamic, there is great concern among the authorities and experts about the increase in massacres and deaths with firearms. And while there are a multitude of explanations, many analysts point to a relationship with the covid-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic has caused high levels of stress, economic uncertainty, isolation, unemployment, and the interruption of social services designed to mitigate these types of problems. Although we cannot conclude that it is the cause of the high levels of crime that were registered during 2020 and 2021, it is without a doubt the only specific change factor that has occurred in this period of increase”, says Paddy Sentongo, professor neurology at the University of Pennsylvania who has just completed a report on the phenomenon.
Something that would also serve to explain the increases in school massacressince it is documented that the interruptions caused by the pandemic to face-to-face education generated adverse effects on minors.
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But the background, according to Sentongo, remains the same. “When a situation – like covid, or any other – impacts a society that is armed to the teeth, the potential for that to translate into more deaths is much higher.”
SERGIO GÓMEZ MASERI – @SERGOM68
WASHINGTON WEATHER CORRESPONDENT
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