Opinion: US failing to protect the most vulnerable from gun violence

Guns are on display at the Dallas Gun Show in Parker, a suburban city of Dallas, Texas, the United States, Jan. 22, 2022. (Photo by Lin Li/Xinhua)

In less than two weeks after the mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that claimed 10 lives (almost all of whom were Black), another heinous attack occurred in the US at one of the most tranquil places, targeting the most vulnerable group of people.

On Tuesday local time, an 18-year-old gunman trespassed into a Texas elementary school, going on a rampage from class to class and killing at least 19 schoolchildren and two adults. The brutal and cowardly act has left a nation still grieving from previous gun-related tragedies to once again relive their anguish and anger.

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For many Americans—including US President Joe Biden himself—the latest school shooting has collided with the traumatic moment dating back almost ten years ago, when a shooter massacred 20 first-graders and 6 staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In his speech in the wake of the latest shooting, Biden recalled that since he (as vice president) visited the Sandy Hook Elementary School to pay his respects back in 2012, "there have been over 900 incidents of gunfire reported on school grounds." "Why are we willing to live with this carnage?" said Biden, during his trip to Asia, "I am sick and tired of it."

But schoolchildren aren't the only vulnerable group that can fall victim to the incessant gun violence perpetrated inside the US. In today's America, people of color, especially the Black community and the Asian American community, who have remained susceptible to chronic discrimination and racial injustice, often find themselves in the crosshairs of gun violence intersecting with racism.

According to data released by the US CDC this month, between 2019 and 2020, African Americans were 12 times more likely to be killed in gun violence than their White compatriots. For the minority group as a whole, the fear of being targeted by racism-driven gun violence has become so overwhelming that many in this group opt to change their daily routines to adapt to the abnormal "new normal."

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center has found that 36% of Asian Americans surveyed have changed their routines due to "concerns of attacks." The poll also showed that 78% of African American respondents viewed gun violence as "a big national problem," which many of them regularly worry about.

Apart from blatant gun violence at spas, on the subway, or at the schools, targeting Asian women, Black people, and children, there are also large numbers of gun-related deaths that are occurring in the shadows--suicides. According to available data from the US CDC, a majority (54%) of the 45,222 gun-related deaths in the US in 2020 were from suicides, and overall, 53% of suicides in the country involve the use of a firearm.

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Minority groups, children, the elderly, and people suffering from mental health—these are the most vulnerable people that should have been protected, cared for, or saved; and yet, their safety and welfare are somehow not enough to convince the government and regulators to at least make some positive efforts on the issue of gun control.

When the gun debates are always digressing from the subject of "right to life" to the advocacy of "liberty of firearms ownership," and when the gun control efforts keep heading to a partisan (liberal-conservative) cul-de-sac, the US will never be fully able to save its most vulnerable from needless bleeding. As a result, gun-related violence in the US risks becoming a forever tragedy.