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Tributes to the victims left at the shrine set up around the town's Christmas tree in Sandy Hook after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, on December 17, 2012. (Photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Le Monde Editorial Says America 'Exceptional' at One 'Bloody' Thing: Mass Shootings
The French newspaper gave a searing indictment of the Republican Party's failure to back even modest gun control legislation in the United States, unmoved to act even after children are slaughtered.
May 25, 2022
An editorial published Wednesday by French daily newspaper Le Monde weighs in on the latest mass shooting in the U.S., pointing to America's familiar "cycle of despair" and directing specific blame at a Republican Party whose singular credo is "more and more guns."
Published hours after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman shot dead 19 children and two teachers, the editorial states, "If there is any American exceptionalism, it is to tolerate the fact that schools in the United States are regularly transformed into bloody shooting ranges."
The editorial board referenced other mass shootings that occurred just this month, one at a Taiwanese church in California and another at a supermarket in New York, as evidence "America is killing itself" and that Republicans are "looking the other way, ideologically complicit in one tragedy after another."
Thanks to "brainwashing" by the NRA, elected officials offer up prayers for victims while refusing to pass even "the slightest legislation" addressing gun control, the editorial asserts.
Instead, Texas--a state described as the "scene of the last bloodbath after eight other mass shootings in 13 years"--has recently passed legislation easing, not strengthing gun control.
The editorial further accuses Republicans of being "clearly unable to establish a causal link between" massive rates of gun purchases and gun deaths. "One despairs to imagine them expending the same energy to prevent killings, the perpetrators of which are overwhelmingly men, as they expend selflessly to prevent women from having control over their own bodies," it states.
It also frames as especially damning the Senate's failure in 2013, primarily due to Republican opposition, to pass modest legislation strengthening background checks in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut----a mass shooting that left 26 people dead, including 20 children between six and seven years old.
However, the editorial concludes, "there is every reason to believe that the same would be true today in this country trapped in this madness."
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An editorial published Wednesday by French daily newspaper Le Monde weighs in on the latest mass shooting in the U.S., pointing to America's familiar "cycle of despair" and directing specific blame at a Republican Party whose singular credo is "more and more guns."
Published hours after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman shot dead 19 children and two teachers, the editorial states, "If there is any American exceptionalism, it is to tolerate the fact that schools in the United States are regularly transformed into bloody shooting ranges."
The editorial board referenced other mass shootings that occurred just this month, one at a Taiwanese church in California and another at a supermarket in New York, as evidence "America is killing itself" and that Republicans are "looking the other way, ideologically complicit in one tragedy after another."
Thanks to "brainwashing" by the NRA, elected officials offer up prayers for victims while refusing to pass even "the slightest legislation" addressing gun control, the editorial asserts.
Instead, Texas--a state described as the "scene of the last bloodbath after eight other mass shootings in 13 years"--has recently passed legislation easing, not strengthing gun control.
The editorial further accuses Republicans of being "clearly unable to establish a causal link between" massive rates of gun purchases and gun deaths. "One despairs to imagine them expending the same energy to prevent killings, the perpetrators of which are overwhelmingly men, as they expend selflessly to prevent women from having control over their own bodies," it states.
It also frames as especially damning the Senate's failure in 2013, primarily due to Republican opposition, to pass modest legislation strengthening background checks in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut----a mass shooting that left 26 people dead, including 20 children between six and seven years old.
However, the editorial concludes, "there is every reason to believe that the same would be true today in this country trapped in this madness."
An editorial published Wednesday by French daily newspaper Le Monde weighs in on the latest mass shooting in the U.S., pointing to America's familiar "cycle of despair" and directing specific blame at a Republican Party whose singular credo is "more and more guns."
Published hours after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman shot dead 19 children and two teachers, the editorial states, "If there is any American exceptionalism, it is to tolerate the fact that schools in the United States are regularly transformed into bloody shooting ranges."
The editorial board referenced other mass shootings that occurred just this month, one at a Taiwanese church in California and another at a supermarket in New York, as evidence "America is killing itself" and that Republicans are "looking the other way, ideologically complicit in one tragedy after another."
Thanks to "brainwashing" by the NRA, elected officials offer up prayers for victims while refusing to pass even "the slightest legislation" addressing gun control, the editorial asserts.
Instead, Texas--a state described as the "scene of the last bloodbath after eight other mass shootings in 13 years"--has recently passed legislation easing, not strengthing gun control.
The editorial further accuses Republicans of being "clearly unable to establish a causal link between" massive rates of gun purchases and gun deaths. "One despairs to imagine them expending the same energy to prevent killings, the perpetrators of which are overwhelmingly men, as they expend selflessly to prevent women from having control over their own bodies," it states.
It also frames as especially damning the Senate's failure in 2013, primarily due to Republican opposition, to pass modest legislation strengthening background checks in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut----a mass shooting that left 26 people dead, including 20 children between six and seven years old.
However, the editorial concludes, "there is every reason to believe that the same would be true today in this country trapped in this madness."
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