Post by Admin on Feb 17, 2023 10:16:42 GMT
72 mass shootings in 46 days in the United States: What are the social and political causes?
David Walsh
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/17/zryh-f17.html
This week has seen another string of mass shootings in the United States. On Wednesday evening, one person was killed and three were wounded at the Cielo Vista Mall. This follows the fatal shootings at Michigan State University (MSU) Monday night, when a lone gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others before killing himself.
“No more danger to the public,” declared the El Paso (Texas) Police Department following the shooting on Wednesday. If that were only the case! Mass shootings are now more than a daily American occurrence. The Gun Violence Archive has registered 72 mass shooting in the US so far in 2023—in 46 days. Those tragic incidents have taken place this year in some two dozen states and the District of Columbia. They occurred in 37 states in 2022.
The pace is accelerating. The sum of 52 such incidents in January was by far the highest number for that month since records on such things began to be kept. The previous high in January was 34, only last year.
Meanwhile, the most the public now receives from government officials and the news media are tributes to how quickly, after the deadly fact, police, FBI and other law enforcement agents descended on a given bloody scene.
For example, the El Paso District Attorney celebrated the “fantastic coordination from all” the policing organizations. The MSU deputy police chief boasted about the “absolutely overwhelming police response to that initial call. … We had officers in that building within minutes.”
The self-congratulation of politicians, policemen and news outlets, who can neither explain what is going on or even remotely assure the safety of the public, is obscene.
Violence on this scale has to be treated as a social and not an individual phenomenon. The society has itself become toxic and hazardous.
David Walsh
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/17/zryh-f17.html
This week has seen another string of mass shootings in the United States. On Wednesday evening, one person was killed and three were wounded at the Cielo Vista Mall. This follows the fatal shootings at Michigan State University (MSU) Monday night, when a lone gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others before killing himself.
“No more danger to the public,” declared the El Paso (Texas) Police Department following the shooting on Wednesday. If that were only the case! Mass shootings are now more than a daily American occurrence. The Gun Violence Archive has registered 72 mass shooting in the US so far in 2023—in 46 days. Those tragic incidents have taken place this year in some two dozen states and the District of Columbia. They occurred in 37 states in 2022.
The pace is accelerating. The sum of 52 such incidents in January was by far the highest number for that month since records on such things began to be kept. The previous high in January was 34, only last year.
Meanwhile, the most the public now receives from government officials and the news media are tributes to how quickly, after the deadly fact, police, FBI and other law enforcement agents descended on a given bloody scene.
For example, the El Paso District Attorney celebrated the “fantastic coordination from all” the policing organizations. The MSU deputy police chief boasted about the “absolutely overwhelming police response to that initial call. … We had officers in that building within minutes.”
The self-congratulation of politicians, policemen and news outlets, who can neither explain what is going on or even remotely assure the safety of the public, is obscene.
Violence on this scale has to be treated as a social and not an individual phenomenon. The society has itself become toxic and hazardous.