{"id":254336,"date":"2022-06-19T17:35:45","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T21:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=254336"},"modified":"2022-06-19T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T21:35:45","slug":"circling-the-square-guns-and-gun-control-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/world\/usa\/circling-the-square-guns-and-gun-control-in-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Circling the square: guns and gun control in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 24, Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old young man, murdered in cold blood with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle 19 children at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, and two of their teachers. \u201cThe worst such incident since eight students and two teachers were killed at Santa Fe High School in Texas in May 2018,\u201d CNN commented. And the second worst recorded school shooting in U.S. history.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The problem of armed violence arises once again in U.S. society, one of its most annoying recurrences, a thick d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu that unleashes horrors, affirmations, prayers and nightmares in the consciences of citizens. With each massacre one is witnessing, fundamentally, the recycling of an old discussion, inevitably crossed by the specific place of its actors\/issuers in the political spectrum. This discussion had one of its critical points during the so-called <\/span>Reagan<\/span><\/i> era, when the thought associated with it blamed the media, in particular the Hollywood industry \u2014 and a little later, electronic games \u2014 for being the cause of the problem. An idea that the liberals \u2014 and not only Hollywood directors and screenwriters \u2014 rejected on the grounds that they were merely reflecting the violence that existed in the streets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, there is an accumulation of social violence operating here that has certain breakpoints: it began with the extermination of the native Americans, went through a bloody war of national liberation against British colonialism, continued with another war engendered to snatch from Mexico a huge slice of its territory, continued by a very violent collision between the North and the South, and culminated in the territorial expansions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries \u2014 a list to which, without a doubt, such events could be added up to present day.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the midst of it all, certain heroes in psychology and popular imagination play their part: comics of settlers with arquebuses vs. Indians with arrows, the Wild West, Billy \u201cThe Kid,\u201d Wyatt Earp, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone…, characters who, to achieve their individual goals, resorted to artifacts that begin with a Colt 38 and end with a Thompson machine gun set to ring merrily on the streets of Chicago during the Great Depression and Prohibition. And when considering alienations of all kinds that are active in daily life \u2014 such as the aftermath of the Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and other wars \u2014 and recently the impact of the pandemic, inflation; the problem of weapons in this country becomes much more complicated, it is at the center of culture. A programmatic saying clearly indicates this: \u201cshoot first and ask questions later.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/JBMbrd6t350<\/p>\n

The social discourse on the subject is often escorted by a fairly widespread reasoning: \u201cit is not guns <\/span>that kill<\/b><\/a>, but people.\u201d Or what is the same: \u201cweapons cannot be fired by themselves.\u201d But if you go to the root, one realizes that this formulation is usually found (although not limited) to characters linked to the National Rifle Association (<\/span>NRA<\/b><\/a>) and, above all, to the strong dividends from the business of selling weapons and ammunition. Therefore, one of the vicious circles occurs at this point: Americans tend to stock up on firearms after those mass shootings happen, and they do so\u2026in anticipation of possible government restrictions in this area.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why the profits of arms manufacturers increase. Let\u2019s say Sturm and Smith\u2019s stock rose after the 2012 <\/span>Sandy Hook\u00a0<\/b><\/a>Elementary School massacre and the 2015 <\/span>\u00a0San Bernardino<\/b><\/a> shooting, according to an FBI report. And this terrible new Texan chapter was no exception.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a <\/span>survey<\/b><\/a>\u00a0by the University of Chicago, more than two million guns and rifles have been sold in the United States since the pandemic began. The amount also assures us that almost one in five American households bought a gun since March 2020. And that in the last two years, one in 20 adults in the United States bought a gun for the first time, which raised the percentage of adults who now live in a home with a gun at almost 50%. According to the <\/span>FBI,<\/b><\/a> between January and June 2021, 22 million new weapons were legally purchased in the United States, an increase of 15% over the same period the previous year.<\/span><\/p>\n

These sales certainly constitute one of the bases that allow the arms manufacturers and the NRA to exercise their lobbying work in the structures of the legislative power, according to what institutions and studies dedicated to monitoring the issue have been revealing, among them the <\/span>Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.<\/b><\/a> Just three years ago, in 2019, this non-partisan and non-profit organization compiled the list of Republican lawmakers who have accepted the most money from the NRA, made up of such conspicuous people as:<\/span><\/p>\n