When the founding fathers of USA ratified the Second Amendment to the Constitution on December 15, 1791, which states in 27 words the right to carry firearms as a defensethey never imagined that 200 years later their decision would claim the lives of more than 150,000 Americans between 2014 and 2022, according to figures from the NGO Gun Violence.
In recent days, the North American nation has witnessed a series of violent events that share a single protagonist: point-blank shots. The most recent occurred last Tuesday in the city of Gastonia, in North Carolina, due to a wrong ball.
The facts
The victim is a 6 year old girl identified as Kinsley White who played basketball with a group of friends in one of the many houses in the Gaston County. The ball bounced and accidentally landed in a neighbor’s yard. In any context, this small incident would be solved with a simple apology, but this time it would be another story.
Kinsley approached the next house to retrieve her ball and was greeted with shouts by Robert Singletary, a 24-year-old African-American man. the girl’s father, William Whiterebuked the subject for mistreatment of the minor and, without saying a word, the suspect reached for his firearm and fired at White and the group of children, wounding Kinsley in the face and his father in the back.
The image was from a horror movie: children running through a neighborhood trying to protect themselves from bullets, chased by a man who was shooting wildly at anything that got in his way. The moment caused panic among the neighborswho denounced that the man had recently moved to the neighborhood and that he had already been the protagonist of several clashes with other boys who stepped on his garden.
Kingsley’s mother Ashley Hilderbrand, he assured the news network CNN that the doctors managed to extract several bullet fragments from his daughter’s cheek, while her elbow was also grazed by a projectile.
“She looked at my husband and my daughter and said: I’m going to kill them,” Hilderbrand said in her account.
Upon being exposed and at the sound of police sirens approaching the area after a 911 call from a neighbor, the suspect fled. However, was arrested in Florida by local agents, ending a long manhunt.
An extensive record
Robert Singletary was requested by the authorities for four counts of attempted murder in the first degree, two counts of assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious bodily injury and one charge of being a Offender in possession of a firearm.
In December of last year, he was released on bail for kidnapping his girlfriend for two hours and assaulting her with a hammer.
Other cases
In just 6 days this week, several people have been shot “by mistake” in different locations in the United States. In addition to the case of Kinsley White, two cheerleaders were shot and killed in a Texas supermarket parking lot after one of them tried to get into a car thinking it was his.
In New York, A 20-year-old girl was fatally shot after she along with three other people mistakenly entered a rural area Trying to find a friend’s house. The perpetrator was a 65-year-old man identified as Kevin Monahan, who fired from the porch of his house and refused to cooperate with the authorities. He was charged with second degree murder.
In Missouri, a 16-year-old boy was shot twice while looking for his two brothers at a friend’s house. He took the wrong address and ended up at the wrong residence. ringing the bell they shot him twice: one on the arm and one on the head. The assailant was an 84-year-old man named Andrew Lester, who was accused of first degree assault y armed criminal action.
gun violence
In accordance with International Amnesty, gun violence in AmericaIt is the third leading cause of death among young people between the ages of 15 and 24. and the fourth cause of death among children between 10 and 14 years of age”.
This statistic contrasts with the more than 400 million firearms that currently exist in North American territory between civilians, police and military.
By 2021, 32% of the American population admitted to owning a firearm, according to a national survey. “This means that more than 81.4 million Americans own guns,” the survey says.
This Thursday, the American organization Gun Violence Archive He offered a balance through his Twitter account where he assures that during the month of April there were at least 5,452 deaths, 9,927 injuries, 165 mass shootings, 77 children killed, 182 children injured, 452 adolescents killed, 1,096 adolescents injured, 322 incidents for defensive use and 453 unintentional shootings.
Comparing the same period with the previous year, the NGO indicated that in April 2023 there were fewer deaths from firearms, more mass shootings, and more adolescents shot, without specifying the percentages of each variable.
Gun control
Despite the continuous shootings and assaults that take place in the United States, several regions of the North American nation are betting on the carrying of weapons without a license. In Florida, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis sponsored a bill that allows carry a firearm without a special permit. The measure had 76 votes in favor and 32 against in the local House of Representatives.
“This Bill Simply Allows Floridians To Hide Postage With No Red Tape Or Expense. Florida will no longer stand between you and your freedom to protect yourself,” said the Republican legislator. Chuck Brannonwho sponsored the bill.
ORIGINAL LINK: Shock in the US: a six-year-old girl was shot in the face for entering her neighbor’s yard to look for a ball – LaPatilla.com