Unrest, protests erupt in U.S. after Texas school mass shooting

DENVER, the United States, May 30 (Xinhua) -- A crowd of more than 1,000 students Friday spent their first day of summer break gathered at Colorado's gold-domed State Capitol in downtown Denver to demand gun control.

It was the second day that student walkouts continued across the United States as thousands of students reacted to last Tuesday's slaying of 19 Texas children, mostly 10-year-olds, at Robb Elementary School in southwest Texas, by a crazed 18-year-old wielding an AR-15 automatic rifle.

They demanded protection, intervention, and gun control measures.

"It is utterly unacceptable that any child or student trying to learn anything should be exposed to this barbaric behavior and military response when at school," said Sandy Phillips, whose 24-year-old daughter Jessica Ghawi was shot to death in Colorado's infamous 2012 Aurora theater massacre where 12 people died and 70 others were wounded.

"Nothing has changed," Westfield High's Anna Sandene told the crowd who held signs saying "Protect Kids, Not Guns," "I shouldn't be prepared for 'when,'" "There have been 1,924 school shootings in the past 50 years," and "A child's right to survive the school day outweighs anyone's right to own a gun."

In northeast Denver Friday morning, students from Green Valley Ranch reportedly also held a walkout, shouting "Enough is enough," and "No Guns, Protect the Kids," while they marched through the neighborhood surrounding their campus.

"Ban assault weapons now. Just DO IT," March for Our Lives, an organization founded by survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, tweeted Sunday. The group is planning nationwide protests on June 11.

GROUND ZERO

Last Tuesday's massacre of 19 young, fourth-grade children and two adults, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a mostly Latino community west of San Antonio, "has unleashed an outpouring of grief and sadness across the nation," National Public Radio (NPR) reported Saturday.

"It has also, once again, spurred many to ask why the United States has failed to make any significant changes to its gun laws following the horrendous mass shootings that now happen with regularity," NPR noted.

"Stricter gun laws have been introduced in the U.S. Congress after past mass shootings, but they have been defeated by Republicans, Independents and some moderate Democrats," a Reuters article Saturday said.

"In America, the NRA (National Rifle Association) buys politicians, and owns the Republican Party," said Phillips, whose daughter was an aspiring sports journalist before getting hit by bullets fired at the midnight showing of a Batman movie in Aurora, east of Denver, one decade ago.

Last Tuesday, Uvalde became the deadliest school shooting since the massacre of 26 people, including 20 children aged 6-7 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, the New York Times said Saturday.

School shootings have increased dramatically in America in the past decade, and each year the number of those killed by gunfire increases.

Although a majority of Americans support gun control measures such as improved background checks, a limit to how many bullets can be fired by squeezing the trigger, and a ban on "military theater" automatic rifles such as the AR-15 and AK-47, the influential NRA will listen to none of those rudimentary precautions.

Last Tuesday's massacre "was yet another grim reminder that in the U.S., where civilians own nearly 400 million firearms, children are more likely to die from gun violence than in any other high-income country," NPR said.

"Unlike the rest of the modern world, the United States of America is uniquely the only country not to have restricted deadly firearms. Nothing like this happens in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or all of Europe for that matter," Phillips said.

"Only in the USA where the NRA's sleazy money buys guns, bullets and politicians," Phillips added.

Europe's population is 750 million, more than twice that of America's 340 million, and "around 7,000 people die of gunshot wounds each year in continental Europe, including suicides, unintentional accidents involving firearms, and criminal homicides," the U.S. National Center for Biotech Information said in 2021.

In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related incidents in the United States, the most ever, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC). That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides.

In Canada, shortly after a gunman shot and killed 13 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia in 2020, the country banned more than 1,500 models of "assault-style" firearms and components, Reuters reported Saturday.

In Australia, after a gunman killed 35 people at a cafe and tourist site in 1996, authorities banned all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, the report added.

"The chances of being murdered by a gun in Australia plunged to 0.15 per 100,000 people in 2014 from 0.54 per 100,000 people in 1996 ...," Reuters noted.

In Britain, laws in 1999 effectively banned civilians from owning handguns, and Britain's rate of gun homicides is 0.04 per 100,000 people, compared with America's 4.12 per 100,000, according to the report.

In the United States, March for Our Lives noted on its official Twitter page on Sunday, "106 people die every day (over the past five days) from gun violence. That means 530+ people have died from gun violence since Uvalde. It doesn't have to be this way."

POLITICS

Over the weekend, Phillips and her husband Lonnie were in Uvalde consoling families whose children were murdered at the elementary school. Meanwhile, just 450 km east in Houston, Texas, former President Donald Trump was keynoting the NRA's annual meeting where he described calls for gun control as "repulsive," the Houston Chronicle reported.

Trump and Republicans called for arming teachers, more police at schools, and better mental health care to identify killers before they go on a rampage.

"Republicans use the mental health excuse to remain inactive about the crises," Phillips told Xinhua Saturday. "The reality is that the mental damage done from gun violence is incalculable and has affected millions of people over the years."

Indeed, a September 2020 article in Social Science Research confirmed that "individuals who later achieve higher socioeconomic status are better able to recover from the psychological effect of childhood gun victimization," versus the majority who are permanently damaged by the trauma.

"Findings of this study demonstrate that America's gun violence affects not only just those killed, injured, or present during gunfire, but it can also sabotage the social and psychological well-being of all Americans," the article added.