In recent months, the United States has once again been the scene of massacres in which an armed civilian kills a group of innocent people, for no apparent reason. It happened in Texas, also in Buffalo, but, as we know, it is not the first time. Nor, unfortunately, will be the last. Schools, supermarkets and other places of great circulation of people.
On May 15, 2022, in Buffalo, New York, a young white supremacist murdered 10 people in a supermarket. While he was shooting, he broadcast everything on his social networks. His crimes were described by the authorities as “an act of violence due to racial extremism.”
The history of hate massacres in the United States began a long time ago. Nearly a century ago, in 1927, a man named Andrew Kehoe bombed a Michigan school, killing 45 people, most of them first through sixth graders.
Probably the most remembered massacre is that of Columbine High School, which occurred in 1999. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, spent almost an hour shooting and killed 12 students and a teacher. Then they committed suicide. This event is considered a milestone. In fact, there is the so-called “Columbine effect”, because, in subsequent years, attacks on schools have increased dramatically.
Although it is difficult to estimate how many firearms are in private hands in the United States, the Small Arms Survey research project estimates that as of 2018 there were some 390 million guns in circulation.
On March 21, 2005, at Red Lake High School in Minnesota, a 16-year-old student murdered five classmates, a security guard, and a teacher. And then he killed himself. In 2006, in 2007, in 2008, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois and California had their own attacks on schools, all with several deaths.
One of the most remembered massacres is the one that occurred on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in the state of Connecticut. A 20-year-old gun fanatic killed 20 students, six employees and his own mother. As in most cases, the attacker committed suicide.
The list of kills is impressive. And not just in schools. In August 2019, a man killed 22 people in a store in El Paso, Texas, and later declared that he had done it “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”; in March 2021, eight people were shot to death in attacks on multiple spa salons in Atlanta; a month later, a man shot and killed eight people at an Indiana shipping company office; And the list is endless.
At the time, Donald Trump, while he was president, proposed giving teachers weapons to defend themselves against attacks. In the state of Ohio, it seems they heard it: the governor announced that he will enact the law that allows teachers to be armed in schools once they have completed 24-hour training.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 53 people die each day in the United States from the use of firearms. On the other hand, according to the FBI, there were 345 “active shooter incidents” in the United States between 2000 and 2020. The balance was more than a thousand dead and almost 2,000 injured.