Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Texas: 8 killings in 13 years
Tuesday’s killings are the latest in a series of eight attacks in 13 years. The deadliest took place in a church in 2017. A 26-year-old man then killed 26 people.
At 2and rank of worst school killings
Once again, on Tuesday, students at a school were targeted. For mass killings – where there are four or more people shot dead, excluding the shooter – US schools have been targeted 14 times since 1999, when two armed youths burst into school Columbine Secondary, Colorado. There are 169 people killed in these circumstances in the United States for these 23 years.
semi-automatic AR-15
The weapon used Tuesday in Uvalde was identified as an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. This is not the first time that he has been implicated in a mass shooting: the shooters from the schools of Parkland, Florida, and Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in particular, had also chosen him.
The AR-15 was banned as an “assault weapon” until 2004, but this description irritates enthusiasts; guns of this type are especially popular in the United States. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, more than 16 million Americans owned such a rifle in 2018.
Legal
Uvalde’s killer, identified as Salvador Ramos, bought two guns shortly after turning 18. He had also stocked up on 375 cartridges, acquired in several transactions. All this, legally, in certified stores, according to the Texas Grandstand.
Background
Federal law requires criminal background checks before the sale of a firearm. On the other hand, if this procedure goes unanswered beyond three business days, a seller can proceed, unchecked – unless there is another state requirement. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System received nearly 39 million requests for checks for the year 2021, a particularly high number.
21
In all, 21 states, in addition to the District of Columbia, require more verification than the federal requirements for the sale of a firearm. Texas is not one of them. Some 45% of Americans who own a gun said they purchased it online without verification, according to a 2017 survey cited by the Giffords Law Center.
reactions
“#Uvalde I’m sick of seeing what you’re going through today. I’m taken back to the fire station where we were taken after the shootings at our school almost 10 years ago. I’m sorry those deaths didn’t change our world. #SandyHook Heartbroken,” tweeted Mary Ann Jacob, survivor of the December 2012 Sandy Hook, Connecticut, elementary school shooting.
“@POTUS [président des États-Unis], tonight you say it’s ‘time to turn this pain into action’. I heard you. But this is why I will continue to hold *you* accountable for all the promises you have made to me until you truly lead and fight for gun violence prevention,” wrote on Twitter Manuel Oliver, who has been an activist since the death of his son Joaquin, killed at his school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
120 weapons per 100 people
Some 393.3 million weapons were in circulation among the civilian population in the United States in 2017, not counting “ghost” weapons, according to data from Small Arms Analytics, cited by Agence France-Presse. In Canada, there were about 35 firearms for every 100 people.
40%
Number of adults who say they live in a household where there is a firearm in the United States
Source: Pew Research Center, June 2021
48%
Proportion of Americans who rate gun violence as a very big problem
Source: Pew Research Center, April 2021
With the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and The New York Times