Flowers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed after a shooting. Photo / Sergio Flores for TWP.
By María Josefina Arce
In the United States, gun violence has become a daily tragedy. Mass shootings in schools and public places are registered in any part of the U.S. territory. And 2022 is shaping up to be a lethal year.
So far this year, more than 530 mass shootings have been recorded, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which monitors these events.
Some 251 children have been killed and another 570 wounded in the nearly ten months that have passed, the nonprofit details.
The shooting last May at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children died at the hands of an 18 year-old boy, is still in the memory of U.S. society.
This type of event is not unique in schools, in many cases involving young people. Since that sad April 20, 1999, when the Columbine massacre took place in Colorado, in which 12 students lost their lives, every so often the United States is shocked by such unfortunate events.
As experts point out, each massacre heightens the fear of families and children, who live in fear that the school they attend will be the scene of a shooting.
The spiral of violence has been growing unchecked. Little or nothing has been done about it in recent decades, proposals to tighten gun laws have not advanced for years in Congress, behind has been the influential National Rifle Association, to which many politicians belong, including former presidents who at the time did not face that situation.
Or like Donald Trump who, in the face of the Parkland massacre, which occurred in February 2018, under his mandate, his proposal was to arm teachers, instead of putting limits on the proliferation of these devices.
There has always been a great divide on the issue. Many defend the right to bear arms, endorsed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution and behind which they hide to avoid advancing in security measures that save lives.
Moreover, the efforts being made in some states clash with a conservative Supreme Court. Last June, for example, it reaffirmed the constitutional right of a person to carry a firearm in public, in a ruling on a case in New York, one of the six states with restrictions on the possession of these devices on public streets.
It is now, after the Uvalde massacre and numerous victims over the decades, that Democrats and Republicans finally came to an agreement and passed a gun control law, which is still far from the demands of part of society, introduces certain limitations and allocates billions of dollars to mental health and school safety.
According to the most recent data available, there are more than 390 million guns in circulation on U.S. soil today.
The reality is that this right that many in the United States evoke so much is an attack on the right to life and security of its citizens. With each passing day, gun violence claims more lives and more families mourn the loss of loved ones.
