Noise pollution, ringing the doorbell at the wrong address, an argument at a birthday party, driving into the wrong driveway – these are the everyday reasons for gun violence in the United States this month. The most recent fatal shooting: Saturday in Cleveland, Texas. There, a man shot and killed his neighbours, four adults and an eight-year-old child, after they complained about his continued shooting in the garden. The police and FBI are still looking for the shooter.
The incident shows once again how quickly the slightest confrontation can escalate fatally in a society of 330 million inhabitants, where some 400 million firearms are in circulation.
Earlier this month, a resident in a rural town in upstate New York shot from his front porch at a car pulling into his driveway. It was a bunch of young people looking for a party in the neighborhood. A 20-year-old woman was fatally injured. A 16-year-old girl’s birthday party in Alabama turned into a bloodbath when several guests started shooting. Four people were killed and 32 injured. The six suspects and most of the victims were under the age of 21.
The Gun Violence Archive peat in the month of April 254 killed and injured in shootings that left more than four people injured or killed — not counting the fatal incident in Cleveland. At the end of last year, gun violence passed traffic accidents as main cause for mortality among minors.
Earlier this month in Missouri, a man shot and killed a boy who accidentally knocked on his door. The sixteen-year-old boy thought he had to pick up his brother at that address, the 84-year-old resident says he saw a black man fumble with the door handle and that he shot him through the door. He was “terrified,” he told police, because the person in front of his door was so tall and he himself was so old. The boy received a bullet in his head and one in his arm, but managed to reach the neighbors and is out of danger.
Racism
The incident in Missouri sparked the debate about racism.
The enormous increase in the number of minors killed by firearms is almost entirely due to an increase in the number of black victims. While white children are the predominant victims of gun violence by shooters of the same ethnic background, black and Hispanic children are mainly killed by people of a different background.
Saturday’s shooting in Texas also touches on socially sensitive issues, as evidenced by the different perspectives used by US media in reporting on it. The Washington Post put the firearm (an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle) in the first sentence. Fox in the first sentence called the suspect “a man of Mexican nationality”. Both are true, and it shows the preoccupations of, roughly speaking, America’s left and right.
Left and right respond differently
On the right side of the spectrum, a connection is being sought between the rapid increase in gun violence since the corona pandemic and the increase in detained undocumented aliens at the border.
On the left, frustration is growing at the political inability to meaningfully tighten gun controls. President Biden pushed a bill through both houses of Congress with slightly tighter controls on the sale of firearms. On the other hand, there are numerous new laws at the state level, in which arms sales and possession are stripped of regulations. More than half of the 50 states no longer require a permit to carry a firearm. It also applies in many of those states ‘stand your ground’ or castle doctrine principle. This legitimizes self-defense with firearms, sometimes only in one’s own house (castle), but in most cases everywhere.