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The Shootings Continue

UVALDE, TEXAS | People continue to pay their respects to the victims at the town square memorial following the shooting at Robb Elementary School. (Photo/EFE)

ALLEGED BUFFALO KILLER CHARGED WITH TERRORISM

Newsroom El Comercio de Colorado

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A bloody weekend

The first weekend of June 2022 was especially bloody in the United States. Between Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5, 11 new incidents were recorded that claimed the lives of at least 16 people, leaving 61 injured. The most serious of the incidents occurred in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

However, none of those incidents were considered a mass shooting. For a shooting to be considered that, it must involve a minimum of four people, not including the attacker. Those victims must not be members of the same family. It is also taken into account that it occurs in a public place.

Uvalde and then Oklahoma

At least five people were killed, and several were injured in a shooting at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The assailant lost his life, local police reported. “We have four civilians who are dead and we have one shooter who is dead,” Tulsa Deputy Police Chief Eric Dalgleish said. Dalgleish specified that the first investigations indicate that the aggressor shot himself and did not advance details about the motives of the aggressor.

This new shooting takes place while the country continues to recover from the massacre that occurred on May 24, when 19 children and two teachers were shot dead by an 18-year-old boy at a school in Uvalde, Texas. In that event, the aggressor was later shot by the police. The president of the United States, Joe Biden, promised that he will meet with members of Congress to address the issue of firearms control, after what happened in Uvalde.

A decade of inaction

“This is a turning point for humanity in America. There is no room for excuses anymore,” said Jackson Lee, chair of the House subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security. “We have 400 million weapons, 45 percent of the weapons in the world. If we are going to continue to lead the free world, how can we deny a fourth grader their life?” she reflected, referring to the children murdered in Uvalde.

Uvalde was the nation’s worst school massacre since December 2012 at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six women were shot to death. The parents of those children, aged between 6 and 7, then pleaded with Congress to strengthen gun control, but even though about 90 percent of Americans support it, not even a required background check system passed.

No excuses

Nothing happened either after survivors of the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where 14 teenagers and three adults died, mobilized to create the organization “March for our lives.” After each of those tragedies, Democrats have hoped that the horror and loss would be so painful that they would finally break through the wall erected by lobbyists like the National Rifle Association (NRA), which finances Republican campaigns.

Although the experience of the past decade leaves little room for optimism, Lee and other members of the Democratic party say they have seen a little more will this time in the Republican opposition to do something, even if it is with very limited measures. “The world is watching the United States,” Lee stressed. The 72-year-old legislator said that sometimes “God grants time” to reflect on things, but that a time has come when “there is no longer room for excuses.”

Accused of terrorism

Meanwhile, a grand jury in New York indicted Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, on 25 charges for a shooting at a supermarket in the city of Buffalo. That shooting left ten people dead and three wounded, mostly African-American, on May 14. The 25 counts include nationwide terrorism and 10 counts of first-degree hate-motivated murder, as well as 10 counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder as a hate crime, and one count of possession of an assault rifle for the slaughter.