By Augustus K. Yeung
Introduction
The United States National Day Celebration is a big day. This year, it was celebrated in a special tragic way – on the double.
Swiftly, police have arrested a suspect after a mass shooting left six dead at a US Independence Day parade in a wealthy Chicago suburb, casting a dark shadow over the country's most patriotic holiday, reports Agency France-Press.
In another July 4 shooting, two police officers were wounded when they came under fire during a fireworks display in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania state, officials said.
CBS News aired a video taken from a high-rise building showing people fleeing in panic as fireworks burst in the sky. Philadelphia police commissioner Danielle Outlaw said both officers had been released from hospital after receiving treatment.
Sluggishly, authorities were still investing the exact circumstances of the incident.
What a sad way to celebrate America's birthday, on the double?! How terrible!
Why the violent way?
A Profile of the Suspect with a High-powered Rifle
Robert Crimo, 21 identified as a "person of interest" and became the target of a massive manhunt across the town of Highland Park in Illinois, where a rooftop gunman with a high-powered rifle turned a family-focused July 4 parade celebration into a scene of death and trauma.
Firing into the holiday crowd, the shooter caused chaos as panicked onlookers ran for their lives, leaving behind a parade route strewn with chairs, children's toys, bikes and senior citizens' sticks and clutches.
Emergency officials said around two dozen people, including children, were treated for gunshot injuries, with some in critical condition.
After a brief car chase, Crimo was taken into police custody "without incident", Highland Park police chief Lou Jogmen said. Earlier, police had warned that he was armed and "very dangerous".
Crimo describes himself as a musician; he goes by the online moniker "Awake the Rapper".
The shooting was part of a wave of gun violence plaguing the United States, where about 40,000 deaths a year are caused by firearms, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.
And it cast a pall over America's Independence Day, in which towns and cities hold parades and people – many dressed in red, white and blue – host barbecues, attend sports events and gather for firework displays.
In Highland Park, Emily Prazak, who marched in the parade, described the mayhem.
"We were getting ready to march down the street and then all the sudden waves of these people started running…towards us. And right before that happened, we heard the pop, pop, pop, and I thought it was fireworks," Prazak said.
She added: "This is the day that we celebrate our country. This is also a day that our freedom got stolen from us – because many of us residents here, in this building even, we're all locked down [due to the pandemic]."
"I Need to Just Do It…It is My Destiny. Everything Has Led Up to This…"
Don Johnson said he initially thought the gunshots were a car backfiring.
"I heard the screams … and people running and carrying their kids and everything, and we ran into the gas station, and we were in there for three hours," he said.
Police officials said the shooting began at 10:14 a.m.
"So very random, very intentional and very sad," said Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli.
Five of the six people killed, all adults died at the scene. The sixth was taken to hospital but succumbed to wounds there. Dr. Brigham Temple of Highland Park Hospital, where most of the victims were taken, said it had received 25 people with gunshot wounds aged eight to 85.
"Four or five" children were among them, he said.
US media reported that Crimo's online postings included violent content that alluded to guns and shootings.
One YouTube video posted eight months ago features images of a young man in a bedroom and a classroom along with cartoons of a gunman and people being shot, the Chicago Tribune reported. A voice-over says: "I need to just do it."
It adds: "It is my destiny. Everything has led up to this. Nothing can stop me, not even myself," the newspaper reported.
President Joe Biden voiced his shock and vowed to keep fighting "the epidemic of gun violence".
Last week, the president signed the first major bill on gun safety in decades, days after the Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a right to carry handguns in public.
The deeply divisive debate over gun control was reignited by two massacres in May: They saw 10 black supermarket shoppers gunned down in upstate New York; and 21 people – mostly young children, slain at a junior school in Uvalde, Texan state.
Conclusion
Why the violent American way?
The issue of violence in American society has been focused squarely on guns, but is it just guns?
How about the failings of the public school system? Judging from the ages of the alleged assailants who are mostly under 22 years old, there is reason to doubt that public schools and communities are doing their jobs right.
In recent years, so many males under the age of 22 have been recorded as gun totting killers: Some of them have even chosen schools – targeting innocent schoolchildren, and teachers. Is this not telling?
Etiologically, American military aggression abroad needs to be reigned in for the good of the world, especially innocent schoolchildren at home.
It is amazing that Americans are not addressing the failings in the school system; communities continue to suffer the loss of young lives to gun killings.
As the American Rifle Society's slogan goes, "Guns don't kill." Abuse and neglect of social welfare and educational needs of the nation do; God-almighty U.S. Military has for well over half-a-century gobbled up the lion's share of the coffers.
And now disappointed or delusional young Americans continue to grab guns to get it out of their chests.
The author is a freelance writer; formerly Adjunct Lecturer, taught MBA Philosophy of Management, and International Strategy, and online columnist of 3-D Corner (HKU SPACE), University of Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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