America, a Country Where Shootings Are Routine

Let’s pose it as a riddle. It’s a country in which every year, 32,000 people are shot dead. Instinctively, we think it would be some developing nation. But that horrifying figure corresponds to the leading world power, the United States. Seventeen people lost their lives yesterday in a school in Parkland, Florida. And as tragic as it is, there is nothing to suggest that this massacre will result in even the slightest change in legislation which protects the absolute right to carry weapons. So far in this year alone, there have been 18 shootings in U.S. schools.

There have been recent attempts to establish limitations on the acquisition of weapons, and all of them have fallen on deaf ears. Barack Obama left office admitting frustration for not managing to achieve this. The Second Amendment to the Constitution, typical of a Western period in which legitimate violence was not conducted by the state but by the individual, prevents any state or local law from restricting the ability to carry or possess firearms. And so today, in some states, an 18-year-old can purchase a rifle but is unable to buy alcohol. For as long as the influence of gun lobbyists remains strong, and while there is no increase in social awareness, the massacres will remain routine.