World News

ANALYSIS: July 4th Parade Slaughter Shows Again That Nowhere Is America Safer From Contagion of Mass Murder

July 5, 2022
Henry

The rapid burst of a high-powered rifle revealed the horrifying reality that no one can be sure they are safe anywhere in one of the most integrated gatherings of the country.

in that moment, highland park got included in UvaldeColumbine, Newtown and Parkland and a long list of cities and towns across the country are known for massacres of innocent people in a gun violence contagion that makes the United States a standout among developed societies.

Detritus strewn on the scene, a lone shoe, tossed bag, overturned camping chair and empty stroller didn’t just tell the tale of haste of those who fled for their lives. It depicts another scene of mediocrity that has been shattered by a mass shooting. In such a situation, six people who came out just to celebrate on America’s birthday have died. According to doctors, more than two dozen – aged 8 to 85 – are injured.

Only the location of Monday – the day dedicated to the national festival – was variable. A similar panic broke out in May at an elementary school in Texas and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket. mass shooting Target Graduation Parties Last Month in Texas and South Carolina. In Philadelphia, shooters sprayed on the nightlife crowd. The massacre took place at a medical center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The shooter was on the subway in Brooklyn.
Television photos of police vehicles in Highland Park on Monday running to help under a billowing American flag added an ironic, new dimension to this latest horror. This was when Americans gathered to celebrate the 246th anniversary of the freedom inherent in American independence. Yet what emerged surrounded the quintessential American circle of death by firearms. When a gunman killed three people A mall shooting in Copenhagen, Denmark, Over the weekend, it was as shocking as it was unusual. But while Monday’s shooting outside Chicago was unexpected, another mass shooting in the US was hardly a surprise.

“It is devastating that a celebration of America was separated from our typical American plague,” said Illinois Gov. “A day dedicated to freedom has relieved a freedom we as a nation refuse to uphold: the freedom of our fellow citizens to live without the daily fear of gun violence.”

Shocked residents told the day of terror

Still, residents of the affluent, largely white suburb of the thriving Jewish community expressed surprise that such terror visited their city.

some threaded view Of the injured victims on the pavement, of the families fleeing with their children in terror and of a man who dumped his children in the dustbin for safety.

It was “simply unimaginable in a community like Highland Park,” Jeff Lyons, an eyewitness who previously thought rifle pops were Fourth of July fireworks, told CNN.

'People just fall and fall': Witnesses describe terror in Illinois parade shooting

Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents Illinois’ 10th Congressional District, expressed similar distrust. “Nobody thinks this can happen in our community, but it’s true across the country,” he told CNN’s Caitlan Collins. And Dr. Brigham Temple, medical director of emergency preparedness for Northshore University Health System, told reporters: “Caring for an incident like this is a little surreal.”

A common feeling among those trapped in such mass shootings is the distrust that their community, which they believed to be safe, has been affected. But nowhere in the country laden with guns is immunity. Even at Fourth of July celebrations across the country, which were completely safe, how many attendees had no concern about their safety? Thinking about the prospect of a mass shooting – at a school or movie theater or place of worship – has now become a part of life as it so often happens. It is yet another load of anxiety and stress on the national psyche affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation and vicious political divisions that contributed to A Pessimistic Mood This Fourth of July,

Gun violence is nothing new in American society. But the proliferation of deadly weapons is now forcing people everywhere in the United States to confront concerns that are familiar with the dire toll of firearms in cities.

It hasn’t gotten anywhere near that much coverage. But the high-profile shootings in Uvalde and Highland Park, for example, are taking place against a backdrop of more frequent killings elsewhere.

There have been at least 311 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, including 14 in the first four days of this month. Gun Violence Archive,

And it’s only July.

gun control politics

Suspect Robert E. Cremo III has been taken into custody near Lake Forest, Illinois, officials said during a brief news conference Monday night after an hour-long search.

Chris Cowley of the Sergeant Lake County Major Crime Task Force said earlier in the day that the firearm used in the shooting was a “high-powered rifle” but declined to provide further details. If this happens, it will be the latest occasion when a weapon capable of firing multiple rounds with lethal effect has been used in a mass shooting.

Bidens 'shocked' by Hyland Park as White House shoots Fourth of July
President Joe Biden And firearms safety advocates have called for the reinstatement of a nationwide assault weapons ban, which ended in 2004. However, there is no chance that such a measure could get through Republican opposition in the US Senate because filibuster rules require a 60-vote majority for the key legislation. It’s unlikely that Democrats with their wafer-thin majority can pass it on their own, and they lack the votes needed to change filibuster rules.
Highland Park is the first to come to national attention since the passing of the mass shooting First major gun safety law Congress in a generation. It’s too early to know whether a measure – which poured new money into mental health resources and potentially slowed the pace at which guns can get people under the age of 21 – could have prevented this tragedy. or whether the incident will reveal its limited scope. Biden and the families of victims of the recent gun homicides urged Congress to do more, but Republican opposition made it impossible to pass a meaningful overhaul of firearms laws, including expanded background checks.

The Fourth of July holiday meant there was no immediate political reaction from Republicans to Monday’s mass murder, even as Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris and Pritzker called for more gun restrictions.

Republicans will now try to point to factors other than gun availability in America’s frequent mass shooting rituals. It is true that most gun owners in America are law-abiding. But logic suggests that the US has a higher incidence of gun prevalence and higher incidences of mass murders than other countries. And it’s clear that having more people with guns—what the National Rifle Association will call “good people with guns”—is not stopping all these killings.

Second Amendment activists insist that the right to high-powered weapons is the right of every American to bear arms. And the conservative US Supreme Court majority is about to loosen existing gun restrictions. All of this suggests that Monday’s shooting will result in no action that would make America safer. The huge uptick in passing a limited gun safety law last month shows that a gridlocked political system has already done as much as it can tolerate.

Yet each recent mass shooting raises the same questions, which are especially acute on the day America celebrates its independence.

Why the rights of those who insist that they have the constitutional blessing of owning such lethal weapons outweigh the right to life of others—especially since most Americans support more widespread gun control ? And why, for example, should moms, dads, kids or grandparents run for their lives so often?

“It could happen anywhere,” Miles Zeremsky, who witnessed the shooting in Highland Park, told CNN on Monday afternoon. “I have been on this planet for almost several years and what I saw shook me to the core.”

“If it can happen on the 4th of July in the peaceful law-abiding community that we have in Highland Park … it can happen at any place.”