FROM THE ENVIENT TO NEW YORK. There are at least ten victims of the last American shooting that took place yesterday in Colorado. A new explosion of violence that comes just a week after that in Atlanta, and raises the controversy over the need to limit the sale of weapons, an old goal of President Biden.
Yesterday’s onslaught began at about half past two in the afternoon, when a Toyota RAV4 was parked in front of the entrance to the King Soopers supermarket, along Boulder’s Table Mesa Drive. According to witnesses, a man dressed in black got out of the car, brandishing an automatic rifle. “He went in and started shooting,” said one of the customers, without saying anything. “He fired a couple of shots first, and then stopped. He remained silent, and shortly after he resumed shooting. He did not do it in bursts, but by taking aim ».
People started running away, and many took refuge in a nearby pizzeria. Police immediately intervened, but one of the officers, 51-year-old Eric Talley, was shot and died. The police surrounded the building, ordering the killer to surrender. Eventually they managed to grab him and handcuff him. Images of the arrest show a shirtless middle-aged man with one leg covered in blood. In total, he killed at least ten people, including Talley. Local police chief Kerry Yamaguchi confirmed that the only perpetrator was in custody, but did not clarify the reasons for the attack.
On Tuesday alone, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long attacked two massage parlors in Atlanta, killing eight people, including six Asian women. He confessed that he did it because of his sexual addiction, to eliminate a source of temptation.
The double shooting a few days later revives the controversy over the sale of weapons in the United States, which Biden had tried to limit already when he was vice president, after the massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Democrats passed two laws in the House last week. The first extends background checks done on people asking to buy guns and rifles over the internet or at trade shows; the second extends the time for conducting these researches to ten days. Little thing, which in any case risks not going to the Senate, where the president’s party has only one majority vote. The two massacres, however, will reignite the discussion, helping Biden to relaunch attempts to limit weapons in the US.