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School shooting in Texas blamed on easy access to guns

Police officers walk past a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022. (Image: AFP)

The US has been shocked by another deadly shooting incident. A gunman has shot dead 19 young children and two adults at an elementary school in the US state of Texas. The carnage happened at a school in the city of Uvalde.

The “gunman” has been identified by law enforcement as 18 year old Salvador Ramos.

The teenager is suspected of shooting his grandmother before the school rampage.

A US Border Patrol official, who was nearby when the shooting began, rushed into the school and shot the gunman.

The shooter was wearing body armor as he carried out the attack.

I was just devastated. It's heart wrenching rendering for us as grandparents, we have children in the age vicinity that happened here. It's It's overwhelming.

Concerned Grandmother

In a speech from the White House, US President, Joe Biden, said he was sick and tired of responding to mass shootings, as he called for gun control.

This is the deadliest US school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed.

Why are you here If not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn't inevitable. These kids weren't unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school, thinking that they might be shot that day.

Chris Murphy, US Democratic Senator

The bloodshed has revived calls for gun control measures in the United States of America. School shootings have become recurring emergencies in the US.

There have already been 27 school shootings this year alone. 26 school shootings were recorded last year.

The massacre at Rob Elementary School happened only 10 days after several people were killed in a racially motivated mass shooting in New York.

It really boils down to troubled kids, troubled young people and guns, and every country has troubled young people, to some extent, but not every country has a system where you can get guns so easily.

Parent

The US has a unique gun culture with the right to possess firearms enshrined in the US Constitution. The United States is the only nation in the world were civilian guns outnumber the people.

There are 120 guns for every 100,000 Americans. No other nation has more civilian guns than people. Americans are estimated to own 393 million of the 857 million civilian guns available, which is around 46% of the world's civilian gun cache in 2019.

The Republican Party, the Democratic Party, can't say anything about it. Because the colonial motor production environment as required by the colonial mode of production is what keeps it light for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

Life Malcolm, Community Organizer

The number of US deaths from gun violence was about 40 per 100,000 persons which is 18 times the average rate in other developed countries.

Multiple studies show access to guns contributes to higher firearms related homicide rates.

The US recorded the largest number of gun related suicides in the world every year from 1990 to 2019.

And no other developed nation has mass shootings at the same scale or frequency as the US.

The issue of gun ownership and stricter control on arms has sharply divided US society,

There is no question that the biggest purveyor of colonial violence is also the biggest supplier of guns. That's why the United States has hundreds of military installations around the world. Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, whatever, whatever it is , even within the United States borders , the police department, the Sheriff’s department, the Marshall's, all those instruments of violence exist.

Life Malcolm, Community Organizer

The powerful National Rifle Association is a key player here. The NRA Institute for legislative action is the NRA's lobbying division. Over its history, the organization has influenced legislation, participated in, or initiated lawsuits and endorsed, or opposed, various candidates at the local, state and federal levels.

The US is deeply divided over the issue of gun control and events like the Uvalde Texas tragedy do not change the entrenched views.

However, there is no sign that Democrats will get any closer to passing tighter gun control legislation. Some Republicans are already accusing them of using this latest school shooting to further their own political objectives.

 


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