Three 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old shot a man in the back on November 22 in South Carolina. The motive for the crime? The man had punished them for using too much Instagram by taking away their computers.
In Arizona, an eight-year-old girl riding in the back seat of her father's car was killed on the highway.
Police in Massachusetts are looking for a man on suspicion that he brutally killed a couple after an argument they had over a barking dog.
These are not the headlines of one of the many violence-worshipping movies, we are not in the presence of the "exploits" of Alex and his drugos, who engage in "the beautiful ultra-violence that killed us with laughter" in the film adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
It is the crude reality of a country that incorporated the culture of cruelty, barbarism and death as a fundamental part of its construction as a nation since its birth.
In the year 2022, the United States once again surpassed the figure of 600 shootings this year, with 645 in total to date, July being the deadliest month, with 89, a report by Gun Violence Archive.
Every day, more than 110 Americans are killed with firearms and more than 200 are injured. With an average of more than 40,000 deaths per year, it is worth noting that mass shootings represent only a small fraction of these.
Still lingering in the memory is the horror provoked, in 2017, by a gunman who fired more than a thousand rifle bullets into a crowd at a music festival in Las Vegas, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds.
The deadliest date in this period was the May 24 with the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 people were killed, including 19 children; an event comparable only to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, in which 20 children and six adults were killed.
More than three million minors are exposed to this type of violence. Every year an average of 3,500 are killed by firearms and 15,000 are injured, according to data recorded by the U.S. organization Everytown, according to RTVE.
In the United Sates there has been a gun incident at a school every three or four days since 2013, according to the same source.
A sad fact is that 1,800 women were murdered in 2019 and, although figures have not been published yet, it is estimated that 2022 far exceeds that figure, according to a report by the Violence Policy Center (VPC).
A characteristic that seta these events apart from other similar ones in the world is that they do not occur in a war zone, near military barracks or bases; they happen in schools, recreation centers, places of religious worship, in a public square, on any day, the most quiet and peaceful.
THE OTHER FACE OF VIOLENCE
A recent analysis determined that the number of homeless people living on the streets in the U.S. amounts to more than 580,000, while shelters have had to triple the number of guests, Fox News reported.
Thousands of people in the United States cannot afford housing; cold, hunger and disease prey on the homeless, while a silent killer claims more and more victims.
The poverty rate rose to 11.6% from 11.5% a year earlier, annual data released in October by the U.S. Census Bureau showed.
While the very rich are becoming increasingly wealthy, 140 million people (out of a population of 330 million) live below the official subsistence line.
The annual Human Rights Watch report noted that abusive incarceration structures, immigration enforcement and social control affecting many racial and ethnic minorities, and the wealth gap between blacks and whites, persist along with a general increase in economic inequality.
The Gini index, which measures the degree of inequality in a society reached 41.5 in 2022 in the northern country, according to World Bank data.
The circulation of deadly and dangerous drugs for mental health, such as fentanyl and methamphetamine, contributes to the increase in crime; nothing is more frightening than an armed person acting under the influence of narcotics.
On the other hand, no one knows exactly how many lives are lost each year in police custody, nor how many migrants are killed at the border by "hunters" of illegals, that is something that is not talked about and if it is done it is in hushed tone.
The case of Vanessa Guillén, a U.S. soldier of Mexican origin, who disappeared on April 22, 2020 at a base at Fort Hood (Texas), revealed a reality of physical and sexual abuse, murders, suicides and harassment in the U.S. Armed Forces.
According to a report prepared by the Colorado-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), one in five American women has been a victim of sexual abuse at least once in her lifetime.
The North American nation is among the ten countries where women are most at risk of being sexually assaulted and has an average of three femicides a day, according to AA Mundo.
Records from the Washington-based National Rape, Abuse and Incest Network reflect that there are an average of 433,600 rape cases a year in the country.
The bad-tempered gunman who solved everything with a revolver, the merciless Indian-killing, misogynist, individualistic hero, the exterminating Rambo, the avenger who takes justice into his own hands, has passed from fiction to life and has been reincarnated in killers who shoot in schools, in shopping malls, in the middle of cities and towns.
The exaltation of racism and hatred in an alienated and dysfunctional society, where insecurity prevails, especially when anyone can have a gun, are explosive ingredients.
IN CONTEXT
Major massacres in U.S. schools, colleges and universities.
May 8, 2018: a 17-year-old kills ten people at a high school in Santa Fe, in the state of Texas.
February 14, 2018: a shooting recorded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the city of Parkland, in southeastern Florida, leaves 17 people dead.
December 14, 2012: after shooting his mother, Adam Lanza kills 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, including 20 children aged six and seven, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
April 2, 2012: seven killed and three wounded by gunfire at the private Oikos University in East Oakland, California.
Feb. 14, 2008: seven people were killed and 15 injured after a student opened fire in the lecture hall at Northern Illinois University.
April 16, 2007: a South Korean student, Seung Hui Cho, killed 32 fellow students at the University of Virginia with two semi-automatic pistols.
April 20, 1999: two students kill 13 people and injure 23 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Source: RTVE
Translated by ESTI
