The Economist May 28th 2022 33
United States
Anothermassshooting
A senseless slaughter
U
valde is asmall town in the pictur
esque Texas Hill Country, west of San
Antonio, which used to be best known as
the “honey capital of the world”. Today it is
associated with senseless slaughter. On
May 24th an 18yearold gunman, Salvador
Ramos, entered Robb Elementary School
and carried out the largest school shooting
since Sandy Hook Elementary in New
town, Connecticut, in 2012. At least 21 are
dead, including 19 children.
The gunman reportedly bought two as
sault rifles on his 18th birthday and is be
lieved to have used one, and highcapacity
magazines, which allowed him to fire mul
tiple bullets quickly. In a haunting parallel
with Sandy Hook, in which that gunman
killed his mother before perpetrating the
school attack, Mr Ramos shot his grand
mother, who is in critical condition. No
motive has been revealed.
There have been over 900 shootings on
school grounds since the massacre of six
and sevenyearolds at Sandy Hook a de
cade ago. Whether in schools or elsewhere,
mass shootings have become tragically
common in America (see chart on next
page). Less than two weeks ago, another 18
yearold killed ten people at a grocery store
in Buffalo, New York, targeting them be
cause of their race. “We’re in this scenario
where we keep watching the same movie
play over and over again, and it’s a bad ver
sion of ‘Groundhog Day’,” says Joe Sakran, a
surgeon and guncontrol advocate.
President Joe Biden, freshly back from
Asia, gave a sombre speech, which merged
the gravity of a eulogy with the outrage of a
prosecution. “What struck me on that 17
hour flight was these kinds of mass shoot
ings rarely happen anywhere else in the
world...Why are we willing to live with this
carnage?” he asked. Mr Biden blamed the
strength of the gun lobby, which has op
posed even the most moderate of propos
als, including funding federal research on
gun violence and investing more in the Bu
reau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Ex
plosives (atf), an underresourced agency
that is responsible for background checks
and ensuring firearms dealers comply with
the law. The atfhas had a permanent head
only once in the past 15 years, owing to op
position by gun groups such as the Nation
al Rifle Association (nra).
When it comes to guns, America is ex
ceptional in three ways. Per head, it has the
highest level of gun ownership in the
world (wartorn Yemen ranks second). It
has a significantly higher share of killings
with guns than countries like Britain and
Canada, which have stricter controls. And
unlike other countries, such as Australia
and New Zealand, which have experienced
mass shootings but adapted their laws in
the wake of tragedy, America has refused to
change its gun laws.
The lack of congressional action on gun
control is its own sorry tale. After Sandy
Hook, President Barack Obama gave the job
of pushing through substantive guncon
trol legislation to his vicepresident, Mr Bi
den. In 2013 a bill that would have intro
DALLAS
The spate of gun violence shows American exceptionalism at its worst
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