The case of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl has caused a stir in the United States. The young black man took the wrong house last Monday when he went to look for his brothers and an 84-year-old white man fired two shots at him without thinking, leaving him in critical condition. It is not an isolated case. Two days earlier, a 20-year-old woman, Kaylin Gillis, mistakenly parked in the driveway of a house in upstate New York and the owner of the house, a 65-year-old man, got out with his gun. Kaylin, who was traveling with three friends in the car, lost her life.
“She thought she was heading in the right direction,” explained her boyfriend, Blake Walsh, holding back tears and praying that the attacker, Kevin Monahan, spends the rest of his days behind bars. “It’s a rural area with lots of dirt roads. It’s easy to get lost.” And more with the aggravating circumstance of having run out of battery on the mobile. The perpetrator of the crime has been charged with second degree murder.
But there is still more. On Tuesday a basketball went to the front garden of a house and the owner, Robert Louis Singletary, was not amused and rebuked the children who were playing in the street. One of the minors told his father about him and he went to rebuke Singletary. The dispute ended in a shootout. Result: a 6-year-old girl and her parents hit by bullets, with Singletary fleeing. He ended up turning himself in to authorities Thursday in Florida.
There are so many shootings in the United States -one and a half a day have been recorded on average in 2023- that there are all kinds of modalities. Massacres in schools of dissatisfied alumni, racist massacres of white supremacists and even rage in a packed theater at midnight. The accidental bystander shot at door has emerged strongly this week, stoking debate about whether an urgent change is needed in existing laws that protect homeowners who use a weapon in self-defense.
Laws like Stand Your Ground (something like “defend your ground”), in force in at least 28 states, generally establish that, under certain circumstances, people can use force to defend themselves without first trying to flee or avoid danger. In places like Florida, you can gain immunity from prosecution once the alleged assailant is on someone else’s property. There are many studies, however, that conclude that they are the ideal breeding ground for a greater number of homicides. In addition, they are usually applied differently in courts depending on the race of the shooter and the skin color of the victim.
After the protest on Thursday through the streets of Kansas City, where the shooting of the young Yarl took place, the city’s police chief indicated that investigators are studying the effects of that law on such incidents. Even Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley applauded the decision to arrest and prosecute the Yarl shooter, an older man who subscribed to racist and QAnon conspiracy theories. He immediately afterwards clarified that he doesn’t think the problem is law-abiding gun owners but “criminals who go and shoot people.”
However, the correlation between a greater number of guns and an increase in crime seems more direct than ever. In the United States, almost 49,000 people are killed by firearms each year, with an average of 120 weapons per 100 inhabitants. That is, a total of 393 million throughout the country. According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2023 there have been 169 mass shootings -with more than four people involved- and an increase of 30% in the number of crimes since 2019. More and more violence in the first world power.
For Kami Chavis, director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy, “what the law is saying is that it’s okay to shoot first and ask questions later,” as the owner of a vehicle did a few days ago after two cheerleaders from a team in Texas opened their door by mistake. He shot them both. It is not advisable to make innocent mistakes in a country armed to the teeth.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project