The Associated Press reported on the 29th that many Americans are devastated by the series of shootings that have occurred since the beginning of the year in the United States.
When defining a case where there are four or more deaths, excluding the perpetrator, as a “shooting massacre,” the first such incident occurred on January 23 last year, but this year six cases occurred during the same period and 39 people died, the AP reported.
On the 21st of this month, 13 people were killed in a shooting at a dance school in Monterey Park, California, and two days later, a farm worker near San Francisco shot and killed seven of his colleagues.
Earlier, a 14-year-old girl was shot dead along with her father and uncle from the beginning of the New Year, and a few days later, a 6-year-old first-year elementary school student fired a gun at a teacher and seriously injured her.
In addition to this, on the 28th, three people were shot dead and four were seriously injured in Beverly Crest, near Beverly Hills.
The AP reported that many Americans are showing a pessimistic and hopeless attitude toward gun crime as such high-loss incidents occur frequently.
Last year, a bill to tackle gun-related crime passed Congress with overwhelming support, but 78% of respondents in a subsequent Pew Research poll believed the situation would hardly change.
University of Southern California professor Pedro Noguera, a sociologist who has observed gun incidents for more than 20 years, pointed out that the situation in which the political world is reacting as if nothing happened despite the rapid increase in shooting deaths creates a sense of lethargy and despair among Americans.
“Unfortunately, we seem to be getting more and more immune,” said Mark Geyers, a professor of gun violence and public policy at Quinnipiac University.
However, the Associated Press reported that there are not a few people who are struggling to end the tragedy of constant shootings.
Fred Gutenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter in a Florida high school shooting in 2018, is working hard to ensure that the ‘Jamie Law’ is named after his daughter. This is a law that regulates the identification of people who buy firearms.
Parents of victims of a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, last year, Geneta Everhurt, along with other victims’ families, testified before the U.S. Congress about the need for a gun safety law after the incident.
“I don’t think this country has become numb to it,” he said. “People are just desperate and tired.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press pointed out that more than half of the approximately 45,000 gun deaths that occur each year in the United States are suicides, and that one or two deaths are not even counted in statistics.