America least hurt by children’s killings

Who watches the watchdog of the world, the United States of America? Someone should. This moral policeman of this planet has no time for his own country and its citizens are left to their fate. US media is not exactly appalled over it, but it reported that the number of mass shootings has passed 400 this year with seven such taking place in the last week itself. This figure pertains to 2023 alone (so far).

According to the Gun Violence Archive, the statistics have surpassed the number of shootings at this point last year, putting 2023 on pace to be the deadliest year in at least a decade. The US has reported 402 mass shootings since the start of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in which at least four people are killed or injured, not including the shooter. (At least four victims should be there for the shooting to be qualified as mass shooting as per the US standards).

America as a country cannot be expected to reform itself in this regard. The very basis of this country and its society is drenched in blood - a lot of it. From the time Europeans arrived on American shores, the frontier - the edge territory between white man’s civilization and the untamed natural world - became a shared space of vast, clashing differences that led the US government to authorise over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on Indians, the most of any country in the world against its indigenous people.

By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 2,38,000 Indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492. Guns have been inbuilt to the psyche of the European colonists perhaps since then and continue to dominate everything else in their life. The most recent shootings came Saturday in Houston, when a gunman injured five people inside a bar, leading local police on a search for the suspect, while a separate incident during an illegal auto race in Seattle left four people injured, including one who was critically injured.

Some 161 children under age 12 have been killed in all recorded shootings in 2023 while 2,334 injured, the Archive reported.

The US media mentions that despite Democrats’ years-long push for gun violence measures - including last June’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and Biden’s executive order in March aimed at expanding background checks and incentivizing the passage of so-called red-flag laws - many measures have fallen flat due to GOP (Grand Old Party of Republicans) pushback, particularly a proposed assault weapons ban. One solution offered by the Republicans has this to say: post armed resources officers at public schools. It means more weapons. But then why blame the Republicans alone? The solution is on the lines of what the Democrats are doing in Ukraine - supplying more arms to counter the Russian arms. Universal peace is an alien concept to the Americans. Their society will only suffer further in future. Does not it remind us of a scene from a Superman movie? Lois Lane falls out of a high window at the Daily Planet building. As she is falling to her certain death, Superman swoops in and grabs her. “Don’t worry Lois, I’ve got you,” he says. Lois answers. “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?”