Two shootings in 13 hours, 29 people died, and the ＂stubborn disease＂ of gun violence in the United States is hard to get rid of.
On August 4, in Dayton, Ohio, people attended a vigil to mourn the victims of the shooting and called for an end to gun violence. Xinhua news agency
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Recently, there have been a series of serious shootings in the United States, at least 29 innocent lives have fallen in a pool of blood, and dozens of others have been injured. Over the years, the American government has done nothing in the debate on "gun control" or "gun ownership", and gun violence has been on the rise year after year. According to statistics, as of August 5, the total number of gun-related deaths in the United States in 2019 has reached 8,782.
This past weekend, gun violence once again stung the United States. After a lapse of 13 hours, two large-scale shootings occurred in the United States, killing at least 29 people. The two shootings not only triggered another round of debate on gun control, but also exposed the gunman’s obvious hatred of foreign immigrants in the shooting in El Paso, Texas, which added new anxiety to American society.
Serious shootings shocked the United States.
On the morning of August 3, local time, a shooting incident occurred in a Wal-Mart supermarket in El Paso, killing 20 people and injuring 26 others. In the early morning of the 4th, another shooting incident occurred in Dayton, Ohio, killing at least 9 people and injuring 27 others. The gunman himself was also killed by the police on the spot.
As the case continues to be exposed, more details appear in front of the public. In the shooting in El Paso, the police arrested a white male suspect named Patrick Wood Crusius, aged 21, who lives near Dallas. The police later found out that Crusius had published a racist "manifesto" full of anti-immigration on the Internet, which made the outside world associate the case with the violent terrorist activities in white supremacy in the United States frequently in recent years.
It is reported that on the morning of the 3rd, Crusius, wearing black short sleeves and overalls and armed with an automatic rifle, was killed from the outside of the Wal-Mart until he surrendered to the police. The police said that the rifles used by Crusius were legally purchased and can be carried in public according to regulations. Greg Allen, the local police chief, said: "An ordinary person may be shocked to see this weapon, but from a technical point of view, it is within the scope permitted by law."
Just as the whole country was shocked by the shooting in El Paso, gunshots rang out again in Dayton, Ohio. In the early morning of the 4th local time, Connor Bates, a 24-year-old white male from Belbrook, the state, wore a bulletproof vest, a mask and earmuffs, armed with an assault rifle and an extended magazine with a capacity of 100 rounds, and started killing in a business district in Dayton. The police said that the police who were performing routine patrols nearby killed Bates within 30 seconds, but nine people had fallen under Bates’ gun. The police said that the guns used by Bates were legally purchased online from a dealer in Texas. The police then found a shotgun in Bates’ car. At present, the purpose of Bates’s murder is still unclear.
Gun violence has increased year after year.
For a long time, gun violence has always been an indelible pain in American society. To further aggravate public concern, mass shootings are taking place in the United States with higher frequency. According to The New York Times’s statistics, there have been 32 mass shootings in the United States this year, which killed at least three people. A few days before the two mass shootings, a 19-year-old gunman killed three people with an assault rifle at a food festival in northern California, including a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.
In addition, many shootings that shocked the United States have also occurred in recent years. For example, a shooting at a concert in Las Vegas in 2017 killed 58 people and injured more than 800 people. In 2016, a shooting occurred in a bar in Orlando, killing 49 people and injuring more than 50 people.
According to the statistics of the American non-profit organization American Gun Violence Archives, as of August 5, there were 33,195 gun violence incidents in the United States in 2019, resulting in 8,782 deaths and 17,453 injuries, including 396 casualties among children aged 11 and under, 12— There were 1811 casualties among 17-year-old teenagers.
In addition to the proliferation of guns, many accumulated disadvantages in American society are also considered to be important incentives for gun violence. The Wall Street Journal reported that according to the statistics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 40% of about 850 terrorist cases in the United States involved racial violence and extremism, and most of them involved white supremacy. The anti-immigration and racial hatred behind the shooting in El Paso is a factor that has been paid more and more attention by law enforcement agencies in recent years. Law enforcement officials and experts who study extremism have pointed out that many white supremacy criminals live in a corner of the internet for a long time before committing crimes, and often commit crimes alone, so it is more difficult to predict and stop their crimes.
Gun control has stalled.
As in the past, the anger of American society was rekindled by the successive shootings, and the issue of gun control quickly became the focus of political discussion. The Democratic leadership of the US Congress publicly called on Senate Majority (Republican) leader McConnell to end the summer recess of Congress and hold an emergency meeting to discuss gun control legislation. Earlier, Senate Republicans shelved a draft gun control bill passed by the House of Representatives. The bill prohibits the transfer of guns between individuals in most cases, and it is the first gun-related legislation passed by the House of Representatives in 25 years.
"There is no need for more thoughts and prayers," California Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said on the 4th. "We need to take action." "Every time this happens, we all say that we must never let it happen again, but nothing has changed in the end." Another Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said on TV.
Supporting gun control is the mainstream public opinion in American society, but for a long time, this kind of public support has always been difficult to transform into gun control action. CNN reported: "The reaction of Congress (after the large-scale shooting) maintained a pattern, that is, some solutions were proposed, but laws were rarely passed." The last time the US Congress passed important gun control legislation was in 1994, and the bill expired as early as 2004.
Objectively speaking, whether Congress can pass the gun control bill depends on Republicans. At present, the Republican Party generally opposes gun control, which is inseparable from the conservative culture of Republican States and the strong political mobilization of the American Rifle Association. According to the data of the Center for Political Response of Non-partisan Organizations, the American Rifle Association invested a record $54 million in the Republican camp in the 2016 election cycle, and in the 2018 election cycle, the association also donated 98% to Republicans. In addition, some experts believe that the biggest "lethality" of the American Rifle Association lies in its ability to mobilize millions of members to influence the election of seats in Congress.
At present, the position of Republican members of the US Congress against gun control has not been significantly loosened. On TV programs, Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and Dan Patrick, Republican deputy governor of Texas, both blamed violent video games for the surge in mass shootings. In this regard, some media pointed out that the whole world has suffered from the proliferation of violent video games, but only the United States has seen so many shootings.
(Washington, August 5 th)