The NRA Monster

The figures speak for themselves. No, they cry out: Since the tragedy of Newton, Connecticut in December 2012, there have been at least 74 shootings in schools and other educational institutions in the United States. Not in parking lots of shopping centers, not in rowdy bars. In schools! Most were victims, of course.

Since the beginning of the year, our neighbors to the south have suffered almost 40 incidents, which means that the trend is continuing and even accelerating. Several firearm attacks are still making headlines these days, especially in schools or universities. The last one took place in a secondary school in Troutdale, Oregon.

That is the recent chronology. Going back a little further in time, we see that at least 200 young men (sometimes teenagers) have fired shots in the hallways and schoolyards of the United States between 1979 and 2011.

“Will we have to wait until there is an active shooter at every school in America before our lawmakers act?” wondered Sarah McDonald, president of the Oregon chapter for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Guns kill 30 people per day in the United States.

On Dec. 14, 2012 in Newtown, a small town in Connecticut, a deranged young man opened fire in an elementary school, killing 26 people, including 20 children. The public was alarmed. President Obama promised to act, but quickly realized the limits of his authority over firearms.

In the United States, [firearms] are governed by a patchwork of federal and local (state) and municipal laws that a powerful lobbying group has managed to make even more lax, even if much of the population would like it to be more stringent.

Elected officials are terrified at the idea of being placed on the blacklist of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the main lobbying group for firearms. That is why we can neither ban the sale of military weapons nor require the consideration of the criminal and psychological background of all buyers of firearms. The NRA propagates the idea that the best way to ensure one’s own safety is to buy a gun. Today, it is estimated that between 270 million and 310 million firearms are in the hands of people who are not soldiers or policemen. The NRA has created a veritable monster: citizens armed to the teeth, many convinced that “liberal” politicians and officials want to take [their arms].

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The killers are often solitary, but in the most recent event in Las Vegas, the lunatics were a couple. Jerad and Amanda Miller killed two policemen who were eating in a pizzeria before shooting down another person in a Wal-Mart store and then taking their own lives. They left the body of one of their victims with a swastika and a flag from the American Revolutionary War. According to witnesses, the woman reportedly said, “This is the beginning of the revolution!”

Behind the outbreak of violence in the United States is a lethal cocktail of psychosis, easy access to firearms and hateful ideologies (racism, misogyny, homophobia), that the killer has thrown together himself, drawing on his unfortunate experiences and everything from the media — social and otherwise — and in video games, etc.

Some states have been hit more often than not. This is the case in California, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and especially Georgia — a state that has seen 10 shootings since that of Connecticut. This southern state recently passed a law allowing citizens to carry their weapons in locations all the more surprising, such as in airports.

In recent months, very zealous defenders of the Second Amendment to the Constitution (the one that speaks of the right to bear arms) began to lug their own [guns] everywhere, especially to restaurants frequented by families and young children. This movement was born in Texas, where its members have a predilection for the Tex-Mex restaurants of the Chipotle chain. The NRA initially dissociated themselves from these extremists, finding them “downright weird.” When a large number of these fanatics tore up their membership cards and announced they would not renew their annual dues, the lobby group was hit where it hurts — in its raison d’être, which is to make money — and [the group] has now changed its tune …