Shootings are a constant plague that successive US governments have been unable to eradicate.

The glasses broke. Audrey Elizabeth Hale crouched down and stepped through the hole she had made in the front door of the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. She was wielding a semiautomatic rifle, she had another slung over one arm, a pistol, and plenty of ammunition.

As he walked through the school corridors and up the stairs, he opened fire on whoever was in front of him. He murdered three children under the age of nine and three adults. She was subsequently killed by the Police, who found her plans of the school center in which she had marked the location of the accesses, as well as the security cameras.

In the different coverages of this news, a coincidence was visible. Newspaper information, radio and television reports, and analysis by specialists mentioned the possibility that Audrey suffered from some trait of mental disorder.

They also made reference to the fact that he was transgender, as if to insinuate the false idea that his gender identity would have influenced the decision and, at the same time, to make people forget that the killing was done with weapons accessible in the stores of their nation.

Someone who commits a crime once morest children is a mentally insane person. But that’s not the main cause of the more than 130 mass shootings reported this year in the United States. The attacks respond to the ease that exists to buy pistols, high-powered automatic weapons and any other type of weapon.

Shootings are a constant plague that successive governments have been unable to eradicate. Citizens of this country kill each other 25 times more than in other developed places, said the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence center.

The most cited reason for those who acquire firearms is individual defense, but research in recent years confirms that in homes with these gadgets the risk of homicide and suicide increases three to five times. It is estimated that there are more of these teams in private hands than population in the northern country.

Referring to someone’s state of mental health as the main cause of massacres in the United States is an attempt to defend gun culture, legitimized by the Second Amendment to its Constitution. As with Audrey, and hundreds of others, the problem is not that they are obsessed with killing, but that they are allowed to do so.

COVER CREDIT

American citizens kill each other 25 times more than in other developed countries. / ctvsnews.com