USAnalysis

The 199th US mass shooting this year – a depressingly familiar scene

Analysis: At least nine were killed at a mall near Dallas but further gun controls seem unlikely

MacKenzie Bates (17) of Allen, Texas, embraces her mother Rochelle where flowers were left at the scene of the shooting at Allen Premium Outlets. Photograph: Stewart F House/Getty Images

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Martin Wall
Sun May 7 2023 - 17:47

The footage on social media showed a depressingly familiar scene. Bodies of innocent victims strewn on the ground, on this occasion at a shopping centre.

The alleged perpetrator, dressed in black, lay dead nearby. Beside him an AR-15-style assault rifle.

The mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, about 40km northeast of Dallas, Texas, is the 199th such incident this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive in the US, which collates such data.

This is the largest number of such shootings at this point of the year since at least 2016.

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The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shootout as any incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed.

At least nine people, including the gunman, died in the shootings at the Allen Premium Outlets on Saturday.

Medical City Healthcare, which runs 16 hospitals in the area, said in a statement that its trauma facilities were treating eight people who were wounded. They ranged in age from 5 to 61.

A gunman shot and killed eight people and wounded at least seven others at a busy shopping mall north of Dallas in the US state of Texas on Saturday.

Witnesses described scenes of panic - almost a stampede, one said - as an individual stepped from a car outside the shopping complex and opened fire at people on the pavement.

In the sprawling centre, which has about 120 stores, shoppers and staff ran for cover, hiding in storage areas or other out-of-the-way places.

A police officer who was in the shopping mall for unrelated reasons, shot and killed the gunman, authorities said.

The gun attack on Saturday was the second most deadly such incident in the United States this year. In January a gunman killed 11 people in a ballroom in Monterey Park in California.

On Saturday, Texas republican senator Ted Cruz said he and his wife were praying for the victims. Cruz opposes new gun control legislation and voted against the measures introduced after Uvalde

But there have been a number of other fatal shootings in just the last few days.

Last weekend, a gunman in another part of Texas, near Huston, shot and killed five people after he was asked by neighbours to stop shooting in his yard.

On Monday, a registered sex offender, who was scheduled to go on trial, shot six people including his wife and three of her children before killing himself.

Last month a 20-year-old woman was shot and killed after she and three others accidentally turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house in rural upstate New York.

Authorities block the entrance to the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, where a shooting left nine people dead, including the suspect on Saturday. Photograph: Cooper Neill/The New York Times

The killings at the shopping mall in Allen, Texas on Saturday will again undoubtedly put the spotlight on gun laws in the United States.

Following the massacre of 19 school children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas a year ago, US president Joe Biden signed into law the first significant gun control measures in the country in about 30 years.

Biden himself acknowledged that it did not go far enough but with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and insufficient support in the senate to overcome a filibuster, further legislation seems unlikely.

After the California shootings earlier this year the president announced an executive order with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales - making this as close of possible to a universal requirement without legislation.

But Biden’s real aim is to secure a ban on assault rifles – used in many mass shootings – as well as on high-capacity magazines.

On Sunday the president ordered the US flag to be flown at half mast on all public and military buildings as a mark of respect to those who died in Allen, Texas. But his ambition for an assault weapon ban seems as far away as ever.

On Saturday, Texas republican senator Ted Cruz said he and his wife were praying for the victims. Cruz opposes new gun control legislation and voted against the measures introduced after Uvalde.

California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom lashed out at the US Congress for not passing measures to try stop the gun violence.

“This is freedom?? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies?” he said on Twitter.

“We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live.”

Newsom urged the US Congress “to do your damn job”.

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