Students at Robb Elementary School were to mark their last day of school on Thursday before the big summer vacation. But rather than plunge into the reckless bath of the summer break, they became actors despite themselves in another bloodbath that occurred in the school sanctuary. The shooting in Uvalde, a rural town in Texas, once again provokes horror and outrage. Nineteen children aged 8 to 10 and two teachers died, killed by an 18-year-old gunman.
The sequence is constantly being rewritten as it plays out so frequently in the American landscape, a nation that has come to distinguish itself from the rest of the world by the number of children, citizens who fall under the bullets of armed killers up to the teeth, whose paraphernalia was acquired perfectly legally. About ten days ago, it was a racist massacre, in a supermarket in buffalo. The Uvalde attack is among the deadliest of eight mass shootings in 13 years in Texas, one of the most permissive gun control states in the United States.
Uvalde therefore follows the plot of a known scenario. This is a flashback for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy: in December 2012, in Connecticut, 20 students were killed by a man fascinated by the Columbine massacre, who had himself 13 victims at a Colorado high school in 1999. How heartbreaking to hear these families spell out the next steps with sadness-tinged fatalism: after the horror of the carnage, the heartbreak of loved ones crushed by the loss of a kid ; then an American president scandalized and tired of having yet to denounce the murderous madness linked to firearms and calling on elected officials to a new order of values on the theme of “enough is enough!” » ; then, outbursts of denunciation here and there, yet another gun “crisis” fueled for a time by media fervor, calls for better gun control; and finally — last act — the closure of the Senate to any strengthening of the rules, a Senate marked by the obstructionism of a Republican group increasingly attached to the 2and amendment of the Constitution, which relates among other things to the right of citizens to carry a weapon.
The United States is the actors of its own drama, which hiccups these same tragic scenes year after year. After bloody killings in Santa Fe, El Paso, Midland and Odessa in 2018 and 2019, Republicans in Texas have considered tightening gun control. But when the laws were passed, the firmness of intentions had softened, to literally reverse itself. Incredible but true, in September 2021, the legislation was literally relaxed in Texas, which no longer requires gun owners to have a license and to comply with training.
According to information disclosed by the police authorities, the killer of Uvalde had obtained two firearms just a few days ago, including the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used during the massacre, the second having remained in his vehicle. He had just turned 18, the legal age to get a gun in Texas. Like others before him, he had left some traces of his macabre bluster on social networks in the hours preceding the tragedy.
Common sense dictates that fewer firearms equal a considerable reduction in deaths and therefore the achievement of relative social peace. But it does not find its way into the inflamed minds of the Republican majority. It was both sad and ironic to contrast the words of current President Joe Biden — “When for God’s sake are we going to face the gun lobby? — and those of his predecessor Donald Trump, who, in the tragic aftermath of Tuesday’s massacre, found nothing better than to maintain his presence Friday at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Texas — “l ‘America needs real solutions and real leadership in this time, not politicians and partisan considerations’.
Inevitably, the presence of increasingly conservative factions in American decision-making bodies is dampening the intentions of advocates for stricter gun control. The more the mass killings add up, the more these conservative factions tense up. While the majority of American citizens advocate for tougher laws, these groups believe instead that to better protect citizens from “lost” souls succumbing to murderous madness, there should be increased access to guns. The unspeakable horror is therefore doomed to an eternal renewal.