In the United States, the same pattern recurs after each mass killing. Horror and emotion give way to an urgent return to the debate on the restriction of the carrying of weapons. The lines, however, do not move between Democrats and Republicans. The initiatives of the former are blocked by the latter, whose supporters recall the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to defend themselves by holding one – or more – firearms.
The killing in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old young man shot dead 19 children and two adults on Tuesday, May 24, has once again revived the problem of mass shootings. “When in the name of God are we going to do what we all know in our guts needs to be done?” Joe Biden said. “It is time to act… There is so much we can do.” While the macabre phenomenon is far from recent in the United States, it has intensified over the past decade, according to data from mother jones compiled by L’Express. The American investigative site has listed all shootings that took place in a public place and which left at least four victims – the database also includes, since 2013, those with three deaths.
Figures show that the number of people killed in mass shootings has risen sharply over the past decade, since 2012. This correlates with the increase in the number of shootings each year. Between 2002 and 2012, Mother Jones counted less than five per year. There were six in 2021; seven in 2012 and 2015; six in 2016; ten in 2019; eleven in 2017 and twelve in 2018. Note that the change in the mass shooting criterion (from 4 to 3 deaths) of the American site from 2013 slightly inflates the statistics. However, the phenomenon remains clearly visible.
The mass shootings that have claimed the most victims in the United States over the past ten years are those of Las Vegas (58 dead), Orlando (49 victims), Newtown (27 dead), Sutherland Spring (26) and from El Paso (22).
The young age – 18 – of the perpetrator of the Uvalde shooting is a characteristic that we find in many similar tragic events. Over the past thirty years, more than half of the perpetrators of a mass shooting in a school are under the age of 20. All are men. More generally, over the same period, almost half of the perpetrators of mass shootings – all places combined – were under 30 years old.
It is difficult to obtain a precise figure but according to several associations against firearms, between 270 and 400 million rifles, pistols and others, would circulate in the United States. And according to a report from the Department of Justice published on May 17, American gun manufacturers produced 11.3 million commercial firearms in 2020. Over 20 years, that number rises to more than 139 million.