Events of this nature remain an uncontrolled epidemic in the country, which is already pointing to a record number by the end of 2023.
By the way, authorities in the southern state of Florida classified as a hate crime the attack the day before by a gunman at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, which killed three people, two men and one woman, all black.
The event was one of several shootings this weekend that once again shocked citizens, who live under the fear that a shooting can take place in any public place and time of day.
“This shooting was racially motivated and I hated black people,” said Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters at a press conference on Saturday afternoon, according to local media reports.
The authority described the attacker -who committed suicide after the violent act- as a white man in his 20s.
According to reports, the perpetrator of the massacre left messages on a computer with clues about the crime he would commit, which were found after he had already started the attack on the Dollar General.
The sheriff added that the shooter acted alone, wearing a bulletproof vest, a mask, as well as an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol.
According to photographs of the weapons shown by Waters, one of them had swastikas drawn on it in white paint.
As almost always, authorities pointed out that the author of this new tragedy with firearms was suffering from a mental health crisis.
A survey by The Washington Post and Ipsos revealed in early August that one in 20 adults in the United States, about 16 million people nationwide, owns an AR-15-type rifle.
For its part, the National Shooting Sports Foundation stated that in 2020 alone, manufacturers in that industry produced around 2.5 million AR-15s here, or, comparatively, one in four weapons.
Recent Post statistics showed that the type of weapon most used by attackers is the AR-15 rifle.
That rifle was used in at least 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2012, including Las Vegas (2017), Sandy Hook (2012), Parkland (2018) and Uvalde (2022) massacres, said the rotary influencer.
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