Local residents hugged at a prayer vigil at county fairgrounds in Uvalde, Texas. Photo: Meridith Kohut/The New York Times
The Republican Party made the United States a death camp.
The Republicans allowed weapons to proliferate while weakening ownership barriers, lowering the age at which you can buy a gun, and removing laws that regulate how, when, and where you can carry guns.
They have, in part, with the help of Supreme Court conservativeswhich confirmed a corrupt and twisted interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
But they did too promotes fear and paranoia. They tell people that criminals are coming to endanger them, that immigrants are coming to endanger them, that a racial war (or a racial replacement) is coming to end to endanger them, and that one day it may come to endanger them. the government itself.
The only defense against danger is armed
The cover of a local newspaper after the Robb Elementary School massacre. Photo: Allison Dinner / AFP
If this line of thinking is to be believed, having a gun is not only logical but also prudent. It’s like living on a flooded plain and buying flood insurance. Of course it must be done.
propaganda is incredible, insidiously captivating. As news portal Vox pointed out last year, “Representative of the Americans Less than 5% of the world’s population but they have approx. 45% of all guns individuals in the world ”, according to 2018 data.
But when dogma is accepted that a personal arsenal is the last line of defense against an advancing threat, no tragedy can persuade you to abandon that idea, even killing creatures and their teachers in the classrooms.
While thinking that large-scale hunting like in Texas is horrible, you see yourself and your interests as something other than that. You did not commit murder. your weapons are safesecure, possibly locked yet.
As a gun owner you are responsible. The person who committed the murder he is mad
Cruces, at a memorial in front of Uvalde primary school. Photo: AFP
The Republicans keep this logic in Congress. They express thoughts and pray but oppose reforms. They offer the same clumsy advice: to counter the evil armed man we need better armed men. They seem to be imagining an old-school western where armed men face each other and the ranger always kills the outlaw.
They want to arm the teaching staff, even though most don’t want to be armed. One by one, I can’t imagine any of my elementary school teachers with a gun in the classroom trying to defend themselves from a shooter. That is not how they accepted their position.
So Republicans keep the country trapped in a state of incompetence, bouncing from one tragedy to another. This is not normal, or necessary and unavoidable.
No other country has the level of massacre in the US, but no other country has Republican Americans.
Just mass shootings the top of the iceberg.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 45,000 people died for gun -related episodes in 2020, the highest number recorded in the country, rose 15% compared to the previous year. Just over half, 54%, are the result of suicide and 43% of homicides.
However, we are doing nothing to restrict access to guns, or more precisely, Republicans agree not to place new restrictions. This is not a matter of equality between both sides.
Much of the resistance to passing federal gun safety laws is on the shoulders of Republicans. You need to call the bread roll and brake pads.
Starting to pass gun safety laws will not immediately end all gun violence in this country, but it could start to reduce the number of bodies, reduce blood volume running in the streets.
something collateral
Republicans have no intention of helping with that matter. Too often they seem to see massacres as something collateralas if they could use the resilience and repetition of these killings to defeat attempts to stop future killings.
Some Republicans may rely on Americans get used to inaction, get used to the mass murder of children, become numb to the relentless killing of life and failure to act.
Then we go through the cycle again: the crying of loved ones, the grief of a nation. We say the names of the victims and we find out about their lives before they are cut.
Maybe this one loves ice cream or this one loves to dress up as a princess. We ask ourselves: If not now, when? If not because of this, why? we listen Democrats condemned and Republicans diverted attention.
And before we fully mourn a massacre, another happens. Just over a week ago, a white supremacist terrorist shot and killed 13 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
In fact, according to the Archive on Gun Violence, in 2020 there will be 611 mass firearm attacks in the United States. That’s not just more than one per day; approaching two a day. (The file refers to a mass shooting attack as one in which they were shot or killed four or more peoplenot including the shoot.)
There is no big mystery why we are here in this country when it comes to gun violence. We should not — and should not — assume that this is a complicated matter. Not this.
We are not facing our sick culture with guns and the confusion it causes because the GOP refuses to cooperate. Death surrounds us everywhere, but for so many Republicans it is a sad inconvenience rather than a force for action.
New York Times
Translation: Roman Garcia Azcarate
Source: Clarin
