There is a medical postulate that says that someone cannot be cured if they do not first recognize that they are sick.
This is what happens in a part of American society with guns. Instead of accepting the problem, there is always another culprit. The denial reaches the limit when considering that the AR-15 –the military-style rifle used by Salvador Ramos, 18, in the elementary school in Uvalde (Texas), with the balance of 19 dead children and two teachers–, does not It is what they claim it to be.
Three days after this massacre, in Houston, a four-hour drive away, the National Rifle Association (NRA) opened its annual fair. "The AR-15 is not an assault weapon," said Joe Wyle, one of the attendees. “They don't even explain the truth to journalists. It is not an assault weapon because it is semi-automatic and you have to pull the trigger every time,” he clarified. What does its deadly capacity matter?
This way of not wanting to see reality, endorsed by the NRA and the majority of Republican politicians who surrender to their dictation and their money, turns out to be the complete opposite of what Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, announced on Monday in Ottawa
Most owners of military-style assault weapons will be forced to turn over their rifles to the government through a legislative buyback program introduced that same day. This measure will further strengthen the already restrictive arms control that exists in that country.
"As a government and as a society we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies," Trudeau stressed in a public appearance and in which he went even further. Because the Canadian executive also reported the introduction of new regulations that will prohibit the sale, purchase, import or change of hands of pistols.
"We are going to limit the number of pistols in this country," he stressed in his speech.
Decisions of this depth would almost be a declaration of war in the United States (confiscate is a verb feared by armed citizens), where there are some 400 million weapons under the literal (“originalist”) interpretation of the second amendment to the Constitution. as if no time had passed since the eighteenth century. The pistol is the most popular type of weapon in the US.
The regulations on the sale of small arms and the proposal regarding assault weapons are the latest initiatives that Trudeau takes regarding the restrictions. In this way, it responds to the tragedy caused by a gunman who left 22 dead in rural Nova Scotia in 2020, in the deadliest incident of this type in Canadian history. This legislation is expected to be approved by legislators.
"We just have to look at the country that we have south of the border to understand that if we don't take action, firmly and quickly, things will get worse and worse and are more difficult to counteract," he added.
These words show that the image of the US does nothing but deteriorate with tragedies like that of Uvalde. Even China, which is not exactly the mirror of human rights, denounced to the United Nations (UN) the massacres of children in schools.
Barely ten days before Texan school, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white supremacist, used an AR-15 to kill ten people in a supermarket in Buffalo, in the state of New York.
The US already had a ban on the sale of assault weapons. It was approved in 1994 and expired in 2004. It was not renewed due to military fascination after the 9/11 attacks. Statistics show that the end of that ban has triggered the killings.
