Massacre in Texas: America disarmed in the face of the spiral of massacre [OPINION]

The terrible shooting Tuesday in an elementary school in Texas (in Uvalde, 21 dead including 19 children) revives the debate on weapons in the United States. With abortion, this subject electrifies American society, even if inflation close to 10% is what worries him the most at the moment.

The repeated carnage leaves a pacified and drowsy European opinion speechless. How can America, that dream machine so desirable and desired, bring about such a nightmarish reality? Because " it doesn't happen anywhere else but here in the United States", points out Senator Chris Murphy, elected from Connecticut, where a 20-year-old madman killed 26 people in Sandy Hook in 2012. Twenty children were killed there, aged 6 and 7.

Saying " disgusted and tired, Joe Biden denounces “ those who prevent (…) common sense gun laws”. As if the legendary US pragmatism came up against an insurmountable obstacle. " When, for God's sake, are we going to face the gun lobby? »exclaimed the American president.

Not easy. The cult of the colt is sanctuary by the second amendment of the Constitution, a text as sacred as the Bible. Over there, the weapon is the soul. All westerns show that an unarmed man is already dead. It's due Woke version white : in the face of Indians, bandits and wild animals, the white man stands awakening and brave all the dangers. And facing the wokeness monster » (Alexander Mendel) Black Lives Matter version, the vigilance of the European pioneer is not about to weaken. Other peoples, like the Boers in South Africa, still cultivate this survivalist mentality. One sentence sums it up: to touch my weapon is to kill me. Here are some arguments:

“The problem is not the weapon but the one who uses it”. Switzerland is the third most armed country in the world per inhabitant and there are no killings, that of Zug (14 dead in 2001) being an exception. Latin America is full of weapons and massacres are extremely rare. However, let's not exclude the fact that open access weapons encourage people to use them. In the USA, there were half as many weapons per inhabitant in the 60s for a single mass shooting (at least 4 people killed at the same time), on the campus of the University of Texas (18 dead in 1966). Otherwise, all shootings occur after 1980 and, according to Harvard, their rate has tripled since 2011. Is this contagion irreversible? Not necessarily. We can clearly see this on abortion, another subject affecting life: America, at the level of the Supreme Court, is preparing to "detrivialize" a practice, thus playing on the policy of supply.

“Weapons protect society”. Because in countries where guns are outlawed, only outlaws are armed. Any regulation resulting in preventing honest people from defending themselves would be perceived as an abuse of power, an injustice. Each time a massacre occurs there, the Americans arm themselves even more. This argument works if the use remains defensive, of course.

“Weapons prevent massacres”. We do not talk about it here but weapons also save lives, when the killer is neutralized in time by a citizen. Statistics exist on this point. Uvalde, however, is a bad example. It was the elite unit of the border police that liquidated Salvador Ramos, " Approximatly one hour " after he entered school. No one in this city of 16000 inhabitants could or knew how to react quickly. On Tuesday, America allowed itself to be trapped like the French at the Bataclan.

There would be some easy steps to take: check psychological and criminal background, except that in this case this young assassin did not have any and his stuttering is not enough to provide any. Raising the minimum age also seems appropriate. " You have to wait until you're 21 to buy booze, why do they let 18 year olds buy guns? » wondered a mother who had come to pay homage to the victims of Uvalde.

In several federal states (but none in the south), red flag laws (red flag laws) allow the police or family members to order the confiscation of a weapon, if its owner presents a danger to himself or others.

After the Las Vegas massacre (59 dead in 2017), Donald Trump banned bump stocks, system transforming a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun. The former US president is due to attend the annual meeting of the NRA (National Rifle Association) in Houston today, which talks about the act " of an isolated and deranged criminal".

It is difficult to draw a general lesson from such an extreme act. Is this passage to the act attributable to the "crisis of masculinity", as the sociologist Michel Maffesoli claims (Cf: article in reference)? What is the influence of video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty that Salvador Ramos overconsumed? What about his family? Did this school dropout take revenge on the school?

The killer's motives are unknown. He had given none. Either way, the evil that cocked his arm didn't need it.

Louis Daufresne

source: Atlantic

This article is published from Selection of the day.