With only 4% of the world’s population, the United States owns 46% of personally owned guns worldwide. Each year, some 35,000 Americans are shot and killed. In the most advanced country on the planet, the mentally ill have much easier access to firearms than to psychiatric care. The situation is so stupidly absurd in the United States that federal regulations on ladders, stepladders, and even toys depicting firearms are more detailed than those on actual firearms. Thanks to the National Rifle Association. With more than five million members, the NRA is one of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington. Since the Sandy Hook school mass shooting in 2012, elected officials in more than two dozen states have passed laws not to tighten gun circulation and control, but to lift restrictions and make them even tougher. easily accessible to killers, whether lucid or demented! Frustrated Masculinity Killers Most American serial killers are young white men with frustrated masculinity. Why are they more likely to react in such extreme ways? The answer is in the national culture. In the United States, “ordinary guys” commit mass shootings because, according to sociologist Kieran Healy, it is institutionalized as a mode of violence in this society where guns are highly valued in popular culture and media. Gun violence is at the very heart of the history of the American people.
At the federal level, hundreds of bills aimed at restricting the free flow of firearms have been introduced in Congress. All have failed. Republicans know that they would pay a high political price by voting for gun control laws: 90% of their voter base are fiercely opposed to them. Republicans responded to the Uvalde massacre – as usual – by calling for teachers to be armed. Dreaming of a gun law After every massacre, Democrats come up with legislation they know will never pass. So far, Biden has failed to secure the Senate votes needed to pass gun control legislation even though they have overtaken car crashes to become the leading cause of death among American children in 2020.
Thanks to two conservative Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Republicans retain a veto over national policy, rendering the Senate powerless over gun control. Looking at what is happening south of the border, there is cause for despair. The only question to ask is: when will the next mass killing be?
