Society where guns do the talking

Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old African American in Kansas city, was shot in the head when he showed up at the wrong door on April 13. When he fell down he was shot once more, this time in the arm. Andrew D. Lester, the 84-year-old who pulled the trigger, has been arrested and is facing charges.

A terrible thing about this incident is that, according to the local prosecutor, there was no indication “any words were exchanged” before the shooting.

It is not clear since when it has become commonplace for people to pull the trigger, before any words are spoken, on anyone knocking at the door. On April 15, Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed inside a car when her friend drove it the wrong way while looking for a friend’s house. Three days later, a man shot at Heather Roth and Payton Washington when they tried to open the wrong car in a Texas parking lot.

Unlike mass shootings, in the above cases the shooters might have pulled the trigger out of a sense of insecurity. It seems, people in the United States so lack a sense of security that they pull the trigger before any words are exchanged.

Indeed, US society is becoming increasingly unsafe. In 2020, Chicago reported 769 homicides, a 50 percent rise over the year before; New York reported 462, up 318 from 2019. Behind the rising crime rate are problems such as splits in society, widening wealth gaps, radicalization by political groups, the rampant gun culture and racism.

Because of the high crime rate, people rush to buy guns, prompting more people to let guns do the talking. Data show that compared to white people, the probability of African Americans getting gunned down is 10 times higher.

In the 1990s, after the Cold War ended, many compared the US to the Roman Empire. It seems this empire is beset with problems that trouble every empire when the end is nigh. Can anyone solve them?