Alarming is the best way to describe happenings in America where mass shootings occupy news headlines as much as the sound of gunshots, bloody lands and rivers all over Nigeria. The season is red and casualty figures continue to rise. In the United States, the mass murderer comes all alone most of the time and is either apprehended or put to rest by security agencies. It is a different story in Nigeria where killers wear different media-driven tags like ‘bandits’, ‘killer herdsmen’, and ‘unknown gunmen’. The Boko Haram group is already well known.

This year is not half gone but the US has already witnessed 146 mass shootings. While news of the tragedy that befell a Nashville, Tennessee school was yet to sink in a bank in Louisville, Kentucky came under inward fire. In both incidents about a dozen deaths were recorded. Firearms are becoming more of agents of death than of deterrence. It is believed that more than 50 persons are killed every day in the United States by firearms. Some of the victims choose suicide. According to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 48, 830 people died from gun related injuries in 2021. Remarkably, more than half of this number shot themselves.

Mass shootings accounted for 690 of the dead. The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed. In 2020, 610 lives were lost in mass shootings, the figure rose to 690 the following year. The count went down to 647 in 2022.

The most tragic was in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017 where 60 persons were killed and about 500 injured. In the last 32 years, Texas has taken more hits than other states. Many souls were lost in Killeen in 1991. A US military base, Fort Hood took its turn in 2009 when 13 lives were extinguished and 31 persons injured. In 2017, the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs was attacked leaving 26 dead and 20 injured. At Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas in 2019, 23 casualties were recorded; the shooting left 26 persons with various degrees of injury. Robb Elementary School, Uvalde also in Texas looked like a war theatre after 19 children and two teachers were shot dead in 2022. Seventeen persons were injured. Nigeria records even more deaths daily in the hands of gunmen, from the North to the South. The difference is that in America, they work based on facts and figures.

It is far from what obtains on our side of the Atlantic where strangely, figures are manipulated like election results. While it should be easier for the Nigerian gunmen to be located because their operational bases are known, it is quite difficult for America to know where the next gunman will emerge from. This is challenging enough for a country that enjoys advantage in technology. The only way out for the United States is to have the political will to control the use of firearms. Many Democrats are in support of stricter Gun Laws, unlike their Republican counterparts, but in 2021, Texas governor, Greg Abbott (a Republican) signed a new law permitting Texans to carry firearms without licence or training. In a country where you had 390 million guns in circulation in 2018, it is difficult to stop citizens from testing their weapons, rightly or otherwise. The result is what mass shootings portray. America is ahead of the world with 79 percent. The United Kingdom is down the ladder with four percent. Canada represents 37 percent and Australia 13 percent. Nigeria does not have the political will to fight battalions of gunmen scattered all over the country. While Americans go after gunmen, Nigeria pays ransom in millions. There are even recognised citizens who negotiate with gunmen to release hostages. It is ironic that as hard as the Americans work to stem mass shootings, not much has been achieved because of the availability of firearms in the open market. In Nigeria, it is illegal to carry weapons without licence yet gunmen have access to this illegality. There are similarities. Some American politicians are against stricter gun control measures, thereby making it easy for more gunmen to come up. Some Nigerian politicians see gunmen as defending a worthy cause. In all these, lives are wasted and homes are thrown into mourning. And when these mass murderers strike, politicians also feel the pain. The governor of Kentucky lost a friend in the recent bank shooting. In Nigeria, a former Deputy Governor of Nasarawa State was abducted and released after a sizeable ransom was paid. Decision makers should think less about politics and give support to the security agencies in the fight against these killers. The cries of bereavement should disturb those who fail to block the channel of firearms supply.

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