By Roberto Morejon

Lewiston, the second largest city in the northeastern U.S. state of Maine, joined the macabre list of places in that country that have been the scene of spectacular mass shootings, such as Uvalde or Columbine.
 
Stories abound about the lone shooter who, assault rifle in hand, opened fire in two public places, killing 18 and wounding more than six dozen.
 
Reiterated, as usual in these misfortunes, are the details of the background of the killer, in this case with a mental history and military training.
 
But few focus on the core of the fact that this society is bleeding to death, since in the current year alone the number of mass shootings exceeded 560, with shocked populations, suffering families and panic among the survivors.
 
The gun instructor fingered as the perpetrator of the Maine shooting spree and his initial escape say little about the state of dread to which he drove more than 100,000 Androscoggin County residents, forced to lock themselves in.
 
Described as a peaceful state, without high numbers of violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants like Mississippi or Louisiana, the eminently rural territory now suffers from having very flexible regulations on gun ownership in force.
 
It is a phenomenon more or less similar to that of other states, without the massacres, shootings, assaults, score settling, robberies and other events being treated beyond their anecdotal angle.   
 
Republicans and Democrats remain locked in a never-ending controversy over a Democratic administration-initiated bill to ban assault weapons only.
 
But the National Rifle Association and powerful corporations are blocking and paying grants to members of Congress to prevent sanity from breaking through.
 
Many Americans say they are reluctant to disarm in a country where the language of these weapons is ancestral, exterminated the native population, starts wars and has military bases in other latitudes.
 
Today, when in Lewiston a trained shooter has sown death among his fellow citizens, the US Democratic administration "rewards" its close ally Israel by sending giant aircraft carriers and associated ships and planes and excuses the genocidal bombing of civilians in Gaza.