– Raúl Antonio Capote, Granma –
(en.granma.cu, May 18, 2023)
Violence continues to claim new victims in the United States, a country where there are more guns than people on the streets
To the tragedy of the countless cases of gun violence, including shootings in public places, which result in the deaths of thousands of people every year in the U.S., we must now add another fatal trend.
As in the old west, the number of events involving people who shoot first and ask questions later is growing.
We can refer to the recent cases of a Missouri teenager who went to pick up his younger siblings at a friend’s house, but went to the wrong door and, upon ringing the doorbell, was shot twice.
In Texas, girls returning from a sporting event were shot when they tried to get into a car similar to theirs in a parking lot.
Another case occurred in New York, when a young woman approached the entrance of a house while looking for a friend’s address, and fire was opened on her.
According to an investigation carried out by The New York Times, experts affirm that this situation is due to “the widespread possession of weapons in the United States, the climate of social distrust, the sensationalism of certain press and the increase in crime, after years of relative pandemic calm”.
Undoubtedly, the climate of armed barbarism is growing in that country and the cases are adding up to a propensity that has turned them into a daily occurrence.
Recently, at the Northside Medical Hospital Midtown, in West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, a man dressed in black and armed, entered the facilities and opened fire, while in Texas something similar happened at the Allen Premium Outlets shopping center, resulting in nine deaths, among them several children, reports La Opinión.
To complete the mourning of the first days of May, a shooting occurred early Sunday morning inside a nightclub in Miami Beach, Florida, resulting in the death of a man and the wounding of two women, according to police authorities investigating the incident.
Miami Beach officials had to impose a nighttime spring break curfew during the month of March because of multiple fatal gun incidents, and it seems that the re-lived specters of the famous Wild West gunfighters, “Wild Bill” Hickok and Davis Tutt, are still roaming the streets. “Draw and fire!”, said the authors of the most famous duel in history, today with too many followers, when they challenged each other in those distant years.
About that case, a historian sentenced: “nothing describes better those times than the fact that taking a watch as a guarantee for a poker debt was considered a sufficient provocation to spark an armed duel”. We ask ourselves now: has anything changed?
The culture of violence continues to claim new victims in a country where there are more guns than people on the streets.