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a recent massacre in a market in the city of Buffalo, state of New York, is one more that happens in the country of the freedoms to own and store guns in homes. Payton Gendron, 18, prepared and broadcast on the Twitch platform the arrangements for the scene where he shot 10 black people to death on May 14. He also injured three others. Again, the nation plagued by racial tensions, gun violence and hate crimes.
A preliminary investigation determined that Gendron viewed white supremacist websites and racist conspiracy theories. And he studied the massacre of Christchurch, in New Zealand, in 2019, and that of Norway in 2011. According to authorities, the young man had plans to continue killing blacks in another store. Last year the killer threatened to shoot up Susquehanna High School where he was a student. He was arrested and taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. But no more was known.
The broadcast made by the young man on the Twitch platform led the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, who is originally from Buffalo, to demand that technology companies acknowledge their responsibility in the spread of racism. she was referring to the way these vicious ideas ferment on social media and spread like a virus
. If there is no control, he added, someone could try to mimic the attack in buffalo
.
Before this massacre, three others that occurred in educational centers in the last four years shocked the United States. The most serious, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, with 17 dead. According to the count of Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that defends greater control over the sale of weapons, the last 10 years add up to 290 shootings in schools. And in 14 there were injured or dead.
The nation, shocked
, it is stated in the media, but the big question remains unanswered “why is regulation not tightened or the free use of weapons in the country is prohibited? Everything points to the National Rifle Association (NRA), with 5 million active members, which concentrates great power and influence in various levels of the government system and opposes any type of regulation.
Founded in 1871 as a nonprofit and headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, its original purpose was to promote hunting and shooting sports. But in the last century its main objective was already the defense of the second amendment of the US constitution, which establishes the right of citizens to own and bear arms. To keep this amendment unchanged, it invests money (about 5 million dollars a year) in the legislative campaigns of Republican and Democratic politicians.
To this is added the one offered by the manufacturers of arms and ammunition, who obtain multimillion-dollar profits every year from the sale of their products. But the greatest power of the NRA and the arms manufacturers lies in those who vote in elections and in the ability of their members to mobilize. It should be remembered that the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, always claimed to be a dude
and staunch supporter of the NRA.
In 1999, when the Columbine (Colorado) high school massacre took place in which 15 people were killed, a survey of Washington officials called the NRA “the lobby most powerful in the country. At that time the president of the organization was the actor Charlton Heston. And although his supporters are thought to belong to the Republican Party, they are also active in the Democrats. Now it is another component of the political system of the neighboring country and white extremist groups, racists and enemies of civil rights are part of it.
The NRA is a guillotine that hangs over those legislators who seek to change what the organization considers to be of historical value: owning firearms. In reality it is to make the sale and uncontrolled use of them legal.
Faced with this new tragedy, President Biden, a severe critic of the NRA, once again insists on regulating the sale and possession of these weapons. And he condemns racial hatred. If he does not succeed, at the hands of white supremacist groups, those weapons and that hatred will have a greater presence in the United States.
