America's unique "problem" that the rest of the World doesn't have

Image taken from this RTE article.

I woke up to the news today of yet another school shooting that happened in the US, this time in the city of Uvade in Texas, where a teenager (18 years-old, not old enough to drink a beer but old enough to buy a gun and to kill; also old enough to die in the military if required) killed 19 children and 2 adults and injured another 16 in the Robb Elementary School (ages from 5 to 11 years old, so the same school type that my own kids attend). I had to pause writing my essay on another human tragedy happening on the other side of the globe and write some words about these tragedies that, no matter what people say, it's a unique "problem" to the US: mass shootings done by a "normal" citizen but more specifically school shootings, many times with young men as the shooters, using legally obtained guns.

Yes, it is true that people are shot to death all over the world. And there are countries like Brazil, Mexico and other latin american countries were gun violence is plenty and also young people die by shooting a lot, but that is mostly, if not all, related with criminal groups and other criminal activity, what some define as organised crime (as there are groups or gangs, like the ones in the favelas or the cartels in Mexico).

There are also countries that do suffer attacks on schools, a place where kids should be safe from harm, namely in Africa but that is also conducted by terrorist groups, or armed factions, and it's usually related to armed conflicts, insurrection campaigns or worse of all, to human trafficking.

The truth is that the school shootings, and other public shootings there, perpetrated by a young person, sometimes a teenager, that simply grabs a couple of guns from his house, mostly obtained legally and then goes and shoots people indiscriminately is an almost unique phenomenon in the US. I ask myself, how often things like this happen in the rest of the world? A couple of times per year, maybe (to be honest from memory I would say it's once every few years, and that includes terrorist attacks)?
In the US school shootings are extremely frequent, although there are different criteria to count them; Education Weekly states there were 27 school shootings this year with fatalities or injured - we are currently in week 21 of 2022, meaning there is more than one school shooting per week on average with victims (4 shootings every 3 weeks). Statista lists 119 in total but only 1 with an active shooter (the particular case I want to focus on) until the 16-May, so now there's another one; last year there were 9 with active shooters so considering that schools close for holidays we can kind of visualise this as once every month an active shooter goes into a school and starts shooting at students and teachers.
It's almost unthinkable for people that leave here in Europe like myself.

And what is also unthinkable is hearing so many politicians claiming for so many years that there is no solution to this. Like a problem that basically no other country in the world has, has no solution in the richest country (per GDP) of the world!

And most of this thinking, if not all, stems from the (in)famous 2nd Amendment and how people understand it 230 years later!

I have to admit that I only read its text right now, when I was writing this, and I before that I had a bad understanding of it, since the 2nd was rectified after the US gained its independence, so it wasn't created to give some legal protection for common people to arm itself and fight against the UK in the Revolutionary War as I thought for so many years (but I have an excuse, I'm Portuguese leaving in The Netherlands, the fact I have already some level of understanding of US law and constitution is already more than expected of most), but was actually created to allow people to bear arms in a well regulated militia (that's how the 2nd text starts), because at that time there was no national army (the Continental Army being disbanded after the war due to the politicians distrust of standing armies).

However, even though in 1791 there was the need for a constitutional right for people to bear arms in a well regulated militia, those days have long passed. Hell, just think that the 2nd was based in a similar right given in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the British don't claim today that they have the right to bear arms! Actually, even most of the policemen in the UK do not carry guns (and most don't want to carry even though more than half are prepared to carry if ordered to)!

But moving on, even if people have doubts what the spirit of the 2nd Amendment is, The Federalist Papers that 3 Founding Fathers wrote to promote the rectification of the Constitution, are clear about this, in particular the Federalist No. 29 (written by Hamilton) that concerns the militia and it is directly connected to the 2nd again because of the text "well regulated militia" (even though No. 29 was published 3 years before the 2nd was). This paper is very clear on what are the roles of the militia, as viewed by the Founding Fathers.

It's hard for me to understand how can people extrapolate the 2nd to mean everyone has right to bear arms, again due to the reference to well regulated militia. It seems very clear when reading Hamilton's Federalist No. 29 that the Founding Fathers had a clear idea that only people that joined a well regulated militia would have the right the right to keep and bear arms and that right was not applicable to other people not under the same role.

But then in 2008 the Supreme Court had a ruling and decided that the right in the 2nd belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home and unconnected with service in a militia. And now we're in this f'ing mess! Not that it wasn't a mess before that but the problem of school shootings seems to be getting worse since then.
And every time there's this kind of tragedy, or even another mass shooting like the one in Buffalo last week, we always have plenty of analysts and politicians saying this is a problem they can't resolve. Or they come up with even weirder ideias like arming the teachers to protect the students or having the kids wearing some kind of bulletproof blankets during school time that. All f'ing terrible ideas that again no one else in the world thinks about them because these events are rare so you don't need specific measures.
But restricting or regulating gun control, let alone changing the interpretation of the 2nd to its core nature? Naaaaa, that is out of the question, because ... reasons.
Something as basic as more background checks for guns (because the current ones are not working as the shootings continue) have even been approved in the congress last year (the Enhanced Background Checks Act and the Bipartisan Background Checks Act) but it seems the Senate is not interested in voting on these.

And what about that constant idea, that gained even more traction during Trump's presidency, that what will solve the problem at schools is arming the teachers so they can kill the shooter when they attack? It's just a ridiculous thing. First of all teachers are already under a lot of pressure for the many things they have to do and many are not paid enough (it is a wonder how there are still so many teachers left in the Western and rich countries, considering how mistreated they have been by public governments in the recent decades) and you want to give them another source of stress (owning, maintaining and carrying a gun shouldn't be something as trivial as carrying a smartphone)? But let's assume this is implemented somewhere and an active shooter enters a school. Are we sure the teachers are able to stop the shooter or will they just become another victim (many shooters are already carrying body protection in case of a gun fight)? And what will happen when the police arrives? What would happen when the officers, not knowing who the active shooter really is, encounter an armed adult (that they don't know is a teacher) on the school grounds? Police officers in the US are already trigger happy also due to the fact they are always scared that the people they encounter are carrying a firearm and can shoot them, so adding more guns in a school can only lead to "collateral damage", so to speak.
And again, why such a radical measure is needed anyway? Again, the same thing is almost non-existent in the rest of the world; nobody else talks about flooding schools with guns to protect from guns!
Only in America we see this "problem" and we see people claiming there is no solution for this; kids just need to continue to sacrifice themselves, every week, for the right of some to keep and bear arms...