Each time, it’s a terrible shock that we think will finally change things. Each time, however, it is the status quo on the bearing of arms in the USA. After the massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday evening, which left 21 dead including 19 children, not counting the shooter who was barely 18 years old, anger is rising again in the United States. This time again, will the mountain give birth to a mouse? Is the United States condemned, like Sisyphus, to endless torture?
It must be said that the shooting on Tuesday evening is furiously similar to another, which occurred ten years ago in the elementary school of Sandy Hook, in Newton, Connecticut. On December 12, 2012, a 20-year-old murderer killed 26 people, including 20 children aged 6 to 7. At that time too, the tragedy had triggered a wave of emotion throughout the country. At that time too, the president had called for change. “We can’t tolerate this anymore”then said Barack Obama, who had pledged to take “significant measures”. “We must change”, he insisted.
Ten years later, it is clear that nothing has changedand that the words of the current President of the United States resonate strangely with those of Barack Obama. “When, for God’s sake, are we going to face the gun lobby?”launched Joe Biden, saying to himself “disgusted and tired” in the face of the litany of school shootings. He also called for “turning pain into action”. But the families of the victims fear the same phenomenon: a wave of emotion and nothing on arrival.
Two irreconcilable Americas
Two irreconcilable Americas clash, pro and anti-weapons. “We are in the middle of a real culture war, there are two versions of the same country. And frankly, the Republican Party has become the far right”analyzes the American writer Douglas Kennedy on franceinfo, author of Men are afraid of the lightpublished on May 5 by Belfond, which depicts the American society divided by the Trump years. The writer wants proof of this in another American news item of the moment: “Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas (the state where the Uvalde massacre took place, editor’s note), signed one of the most extreme laws against abortion a few weeks ago. Welcome to the United States today.”
Whereas in the United States, the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitutionhe laments that “even after four, five nightmares like this, everyone refuses to change the law” Why ? He recalls that the big arms companies are “very involved in the Congress” : “They support a lot of senators with their money, it’s a huge lobby.”
the “the gun lobby funds a lot of election campaigns”, “a lot of elected members of Congress got there because they were funded by the gun lobby”, also reminds Romain Huret. And on Wednesday, the day after the shooting, the powerful pro-arms lobby, the NRA, cleared itself of all responsibility, denouncing “the act of an isolated and deranged criminal”.
“It goes on, it goes on. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, who is very extreme, said, ‘Our thoughts, our prayers are with the families of the victims during this total tragedy, but it’s not the guns’ fault. .’ It’s extraordinary”, alarmed Douglas Kennedy. The Senate has also been vehemently singled out by NBA coach Steve Kerr. The influential coach of the Golden State Warriors has advocated for the regulation of arms sales and attacked US senators who refuse to legislate, referring to a measure proposed during the mandate of Barack Obama aimed at verifying the criminal or psychological background of purchasers of individual weapons. “We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington, who refuse to even put this measure to a vote, despite what we, the American people, want.“, he was indignant, banging his fist on the table.
“Today in the United States, I can go to a store with my driver’s license and because I don’t have a criminal record, I can buy a gun”, says the American writer Douglas Kennedy. But if, for the first time, the Senate has programmed on its agenda a first reading of the bill mentioned by Steve Kerr, “there is little chance that anything will change” in the regulation of firearms, estimates the political scientist and specialist in the United States Didier Combeau, guest on franceinfo. “Today, there is greater polarization than in the past on this issue between Democrats and Republicans. The right to arms has become a sort of marker in these wars over American identity.” he analyzes.
Gold, “Since there are 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats in the Senate, there is little chance that anything will change. Even if a law were passed, it would have only limited objectives by prohibiting only certain weapons or by allowing better check the psychiatric and criminal backgrounds of buyers. And anyway, we expect the Supreme Court to decide soon that such a regulation would be unconstitutional.”
On this issue, the American president has indeed “very few powers” and can’t “change things only if he has a very solid majority in Congress”, recalls Soufian Alsabbagh on franceinfo. “It takes 60% of senators to pass the majority of the laws which, for example in the case of weapons, would make it possible to pass a significant reform”. And according to him, “electoral mapping system favors Republicans”. result, even if “90% of Americans are absolutely in favor of a number of controls on the sale of arms and the regulation of arms”, nothing changes. “The problem is 100% a political problem.”
“How long can we sit idly by?”
In Uvalde, hundreds of people gathered on Wednesday evening in the stands of a theater to mourn the victims of the massacre. “My heart is broken”, sobbed Ryan Ramirez, who lost his 10-year-old daughter Alithia in the killings. By his side, his wife Jessica was crying softly, their other daughter in her arms.
Esmeralda Bravo, for her part, held a photo of Nevaeh, her late granddaughter. “There is no explanation”she said. “She was a good little girl, very shy and very pretty. (…) Having the support of the community means a lot to me, but I would prefer my little girl to be here by my side”.
“As a country, how long can we sit idly by while innocent children are being killed?”was indignant the association Sandy Hook Promise, created after the shooting of the school of Sandy Hook. “I’m really angry (…) We knew it was going to happen. But we didn’t know where. We know it will happen again. But we don’t know where”, said Manuel Oliver, the father of a victim of the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, in a cold anger on CBS.
Elsewhere in the world, more and more voices are raised to criticize the American “model”. Like French President Emmanuel Macron who said he shared the “anger” of those who oppose the proliferation of firearms in the United States. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, visiting the United States, recalled that her government had tightened the regulation of the sale of weapons after the racist massacre which left 51 dead in two mosques in Christchurch, in 2019. “We are a pragmatic people. When we see something like this happen, everyone says: never again”she noted on CBS.
In Australia, where semi-automatic weapons were banned shortly after a mass killing in 1996, a minister in the new Labor government has denounced “a new senseless act of armed violence in the United States”: “It is difficult to imagine that a great country like the United States can continue like this, with this armed violence, these massacres”Budget Minister Jim Chalmers told reporters.
The “March for our Lives” movement, created after the Parkland shootings, called for a large rally on June 11 in Washington to call for tougher gun regulations. The beginning of a real protest like the conflagration known in the United States after the death of George Floyd against police violence?
The tragedies multiply, the weapons too
In 2012, after the Newton massacre, arms sales had exploded in the country, a concrete manifestation of the argument defended by Donald Trump according to which more weapons equal more security. After the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis in November 2015, the former American president had estimated that the attacks would have caused fewer deaths if the victims had been armed.
“Between 2000 and today, the production of handguns, pistols and revolvers, has tripled and therefore the number of weapons sold has exploded”, panics the specialist of the United States Didier Combeau. The country had nearly 400 million weapons in circulation among the civilian population in 2017, or 120 weapons per 100 inhabitantsaccording to the Small Arms Survey project. “Americans tend to rush to the gun shops when there are regulatory proposals. But there was the 2016 election. A lot of people thought Hillary Clinton was going to be elected and that she was going to regulate firearms. And then there was the 2020 elections and the Covid crisis with all the concerns it has generated”explains Didier Combeau.
Another worrying indicator: weapons have become the leading cause of death among young people Americans, according to a recent study by health authorities. In 2020, 4,368 children and teens under the age of 19 died from gunshot wounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In comparison, 4,036 deaths were attributed to road accidents in this age category.
In a country where young people under the age of 19 are therefore more likely to die from a gun than from a road accident, shootings have now become almost commonplace: one of the teachers of the Uvalde school, present in another class of the establishment at the time of the tragedy, told ABC how its students put into practice their years of training for such a situation, gathering in silence under their table. These workouts have become the norm in schools in the USA. “They knew it was not a drill. We had to be quiet, or else we were going to alert him to our presence,” detailed the teacher.
The killing that occurred on Tuesday has also revived the never-healed wounds of previous massacres of school children, who are calling in vain for stricter measures against the proliferation of firearms: in addition to Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 killed 15 people, including the two shooters. We can also cite that of Santa Fe High School (10 deaths in 2018), that of Parkland High School (17 deaths in 2018), or even that of Oxford High School (4 deaths in 2021).
While waiting to find a way out of this impossible equation, Joe Biden will go to Uvalde this Sunday.