Source: Xinhua Net
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, May 25 "Our hearts are completely broken. There is no way to stop the bullets by mourning and praying. To honor those who have lost and to save countless lives, we need to act. If we just wait, we will die. ”
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman was killed after shooting at at least 19 children and two adults at Rob Elementary School in Yuvaldi, Texas, USA. Student groups supporting the legislation to control guns "March for Our Lives," families of those killed in past shootings, and some politicians have called for action now!
Enough is enough! When is there action?
March for Our Lives was founded in the aftermath of the February 2018 shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Senior High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooting killed 17 people.
According to CNN, the Rob Elementary School shooting was at least the 30th shooting in public elementary schools and kindergartens in the United States this year. Together, the remaining 29 cases resulted in at least 10 deaths and 51 injuries. According to the "Gun Violence Files" website, as of the 24th, 2022 has passed 144 days, during which at least 212 mass shootings have occurred in the United States.
In the United States, mass shootings typically refer to shootings that injure or kill more than 4 people in addition to the gunman.
On January 14, 2013, roses with portraits of the victims of the shooting were placed near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. A shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, killed 20 schoolchildren and six teachers. Xinhua News Agency
The Rob Elementary School shooting was the deadliest school shooting since the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, 20 children and 6 adults were shot dead. The daughter of one of the dead, Erica Rafferty, told CNN that as soon as she heard the news of the shooting at Rob Elementary School, her thoughts immediately returned to the day of the Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, remembering her mother's voice and smile, "Everything seems to be yesterday."
Rafferty hopes that Washington can act. "I want us to hear encouraging words that we need more than just mourning and prayer. It's been almost a decade, and mourning and praying will not bring my mother back from the dead, and will not bring back to life the people killed today at Rob Elementary School. ”
In Dallas, Texas, more than 560 kilometers north of Yuvaldi, at a pre-game news conference for Game 4 of the NBA's Playoffs Western Conference, Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, who has always advocated gun control, was emotional: Over the past 10 days, we have seen elderly people in Buffalo city killed in supermarkets, we have seen people in Southern California killed in churches, and now we see children being killed in schools. "When are we going to do something?" Cole said he was tired of expressing condolences to the families of the victims of the shooting and tired of the pre-match silence, "I'm sorry", "I've had enough".
This is a gun photographed at the Dallas Gun Show in the United States on January 22. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Li Lin)
It is difficult to control the gun, and it is difficult to go to the blue sky
Cole said the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution last year calling for background checks on every gun sale, but republicans have not been able to pass in the Senate due to opposition from Republican senators, and Republicans have even refused to vote.
He asked Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell over the air: "Will you put your desire for power above the lives of our children, the elderly, and the faithful?" "The 50 [Republican] senators in Washington are going to hold us hostage." Do you realize that 90 percent of Americans, regardless of the political party they support, want background checks, general ones? 90% of us support it. ”
"They don't vote because they want to hold their power. Lamentable. ”
Former Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton similarly wrote on social media Twitter: "Mourning and praying are not enough. "For years, there has been no progress in gun control legislation, and "we are becoming a country filled with screams of pain." Former Democratic President Barack Obama issued a statement saying that gun-owning lobbies and Republicans with no intention of gun control had "paralyzed" the United States.
Republican Sen. Thomas Tillis warned Democrats against a "reflexive response," claiming that gun control legislation would hurt the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
This is the Capitol, photographed in Washington, D.C., on December 2, 2021. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Shen Ting)
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1791, gave citizens the right to bear guns. However, more than 200 years later, both the social ecology and the lethality of weapons have changed dramatically. As political polarization in the United States continues to increase and social rifts increase, guns have created more and more tragedies. At the same time, the production, sale and use of firearms have formed a huge industrial chain, and gun-loving interest groups such as the National Rifle Association have long penetrated into all aspects of American political life.
Texas is one of the loosest places in the United States for gun control. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a NRA-backed law last June that would allow Texans over the age of 21 to carry a handgun in public without having to obtain a license or training. Abbott claimed that would make the state a "Second Amendment sanctuary" free from any federal-level gun control laws. Previously, Texas had allowed citizens to publicly carry rifles without a gun license.
Abbott said at a press conference earlier on the 24th that the gunman was carrying a pistol and possibly a rifle when he broke into Rob Elementary School. (Hu Ruoyu)
(Editor-in-charge: Cui Yige, Cui Yue)