The United States woke up in mourning this Wednesday after a shooting in UvaldeTexas, in which an 18-year-old cold-bloodedly murdered at least 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school.
Although the authorities are still investigating the motives for the crime and everything points to an isolated case of a teenager with serious psychological problems, the truth is that in the US these types of events have become almost daily bread.
A phenomenon, moreover, that is on the rise.
(Read more: Biden after Texas shooting: ‘When will we face the gun lobby?’)
The country, in fact, was barely recovering from the massacre 10 days ago when another assailant, also 18 years old, killed 10 people of color in a supermarket in buffaloNew York.
The Uvalde case will go down in history as the second deadliest incident in an educational center, only surpassed by the 27 deaths left by the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, when 20 students between the ages of four and six also lost their lives. years. It is also the seventh deadliest assault recorded since these types of counts are being carried out and which leads a shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, where 56 people died.
What do the numbers of shootings in the US indicate?
But according to the Archive for Firearm Violence, only so far in 2022 have they been presented. 215 assaults or “mass shootings” in the country, which are defined as incidents where at least four people are killed or injured.
That is, more than one daily.According to this organization, in 2021, 693 shootings of this type were documented, the highest number recorded in decades.
To put it in context, the figures for 2014 spoke of 272 cases. And from there it has come on the rise: , 336 in 2015, 382 in 2016, 348 in 2017, 350 in 2018, 417 in 2019, and 610 in 2020.
Not all organizations count these types of events in the same way because it depends on how assaults are defined. But even the same FBI statistics report this escalation. According to a report this week, in 2021 there were 61 incidents in which an assailant opened fire on a group of people.
Last year there were 41 school shootings, the highest number since at least 1999, which was the year they began measuring the phenomenon. And in this 2022 there are already 24
The FBI does not include in this list violence related to criminal gangs or cases of residential or domestic disputes and hence the discrepancy with the figures.
But the number is also historical. From 30 assaults in 2018 and 2019 to 40 in 2020 and then to the 61 registered last year.
The report concludes that the 2021 assaults left 103 dead and 140 injured.
The case of schools is also dramatic. Although the authorities do not keep an official count of how many cases of shootings have occurred in educational centers, media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post have spent years documenting these types of incidents.
According to the Post, for example, in 2021 there were 41 school shootings, the highest number since at least 1999, which was the year when they began to measure the phenomenon. And in this 2022, which is not even halfway through, there are already 24.
In total, according to this count, at least 185 children have died in a school shooting and 369 have been injured.
According to the newspaper, in these 20 years at least 311 thousand children have been exposed to this type of violence in the classroom.
Effects and reasons that explain these facts
What is incalculable is the long-term effect that this type of violence has on minors.
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 correlation with the number of weapons circulating among the civilian population and how easy it is to acquire them.
US data in perspective with other countries
According to a study by the Small Arms Survey (SAS), no other country in the world has more weapons than inhabitants, as does the US. This firm, based in Switzerland, maintains that in the US there are more than 393 million in circulation, that is, 120 per 100 inhabitants.
To put it in context, the second country on the list is Yemen, which is experiencing an armed conflict, where the rate is 53 per 100 inhabitants.
According to SAS, although the US represents only 4.4 percent of the planet’s population, its civilians own 46 percent of all the world’s weapons.
What does the Second Amendment to the Constitution say?
That, in part, is related to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees the right of its citizens to bear firearms.
In fact, in a recent Gallup survey, 44 percent of people surveyed in the US said they live in a home where there are guns.
Another study written by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, states that Since 1966, 31 percent of all massacres or shootings committed in the world have been perpetrated by Americans.
Yet despite those numbers, Second Amendment advocates, particularly conservatives and Republicans, insist that access to guns is not the problem.
This same Tuesday, after the massacre in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz said that limiting access would not reduce crime. Before they have proposed to arm the teachers so that they can counteract an assailant.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
Washington
On Twitter @sergom68
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