Gun control not control by gun lobby

A mass shooting in Cleveland, Texas, on April 28 claimed five lives and the suspected gunman was arrested only after a four-day-long manhunt.

However, an online search with keywords such as "Texas shooting" may not lead to the particular incident because another fresh shooting took place in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, in which nine people including the gunman were killed and seven others injured.

Mass shootings are taking place so frequently in the United States that even media outlets find it difficult to keep pace with them. In the first four months of 2023, Gun Violence Archive website had already recorded 184 mass shootings, or 1.5 per day; 5,971 gun deaths, bigger than a fortified brigade; and 11,035 gun injuries, which is more than the number of hospital beds in any medium-sized state in the US.

At the same time, it seems people are becoming increasingly indifferent toward these tragedies that are taking place with increasing regularity in the US. So much so that the two shooting incidents in Texas were not even trending on US social networking sites.

It is sad, but the fact remains that people are getting increasingly "accustomed" to mass shootings in the US, the country that invented the term "mass shootings", which involves four deaths or more in a firing incident.

That in turn reflects the deep failure of the US authorities to protect the public from the threat of guns. Those opposed to gun control always say that it is people who kill people and guns are only the tools they use, but surely there would have been fewer casualties if these deadly tools were not so rampant.

All data point to the necessity of controlling guns instead of getting controlled by them.