The bloodshed in Stockton, where several citizens were killed at a child’s birthday celebration, is just one of hundreds of similar incidents that have plunged American society into an atmosphere of fear and distrust. The shooting took place in the dining area of an ice cream parlor, leaving four dead and ten injured, and once again drew public attention to a reality that U.S. officials have long tried to obscure through political narratives. Official statistics show that thousands die each year in individual and mass shootings—events rooted in the economic and political structure of the United States, a system that prioritizes the profits of arms cartels over human life and security. The pervasiveness of violence is not random but a direct consequence of laws that, under the guise of protecting gun rights, have in practice turned society into a deadly roulette.

Flawed Legislation and Reproduction of Daily Death

Statistics indicate that over 600 mass shootings occur in the U.S. each year—an average of two per day. While public opinion has repeatedly called for serious restrictions on gun ownership, lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have resisted any fundamental reforms. The extensive lobbying by the firearms industry, from Congress to the White House, blocks any effective action. Notably, the measures proposed—rather than reducing weapons—merely implement psychological tests for new buyers and promote a culture of “public armament.” Meanwhile, more than 390 million firearms are in the hands of American citizens, exceeding the country’s total population. This sheer volume of weapons has not prevented violence but has instead embedded it into the daily lives of citizens. For this reason, shootings are less exceptions than symptoms of a structural crisis produced by the intersection of capitalism, electoral politics, and unchecked influence of arms lobbyists.

Institutionalized Violence: From American Streets to Warzones

Domestic violence in the U.S. cannot be analyzed separately from the country’s external behavior. The same mindset that leads to the annual police killing of over a thousand innocent citizens also manifests abroad in warmongering, military interventions, and arms exports. Globally, the U.S. is both a producer and a beneficiary of violence—from arms races to support for repressive regimes such as Israel, which receives billions annually to advance destabilizing policies. In this way, the U.S. political system is built on a foundation of institutionalized violence, rooted in the “Wild West” and now reproduced through proxy wars, economic pressure, and military operations. In such a system, diplomacy has little role, and U.S. policy relies primarily on military power.

Security Deflection and Trump’s Political Exploitation

As domestic violence in the U.S. escalates, officials have sought to deflect public attention rather than solve the crisis. A prime example is the attempt to attribute recent attacks to Afghan nationals—a move more political than factual, serving internal power struggles.

Trump, by emphasizing the cases of Afghan citizens, seeks to highlight the Biden administration’s failures in the Afghanistan withdrawal while shaping the national psyche in favor of his hardline immigration policies. He has long pursued extreme measures, such as mass deportations and increased National Guard presence in states—plans that some analysts see as a prelude to a form of “soft coup.” Meanwhile, multiple reports indicate that many perpetrators of deadly U.S. shootings have themselves been former military or security personnel. Furthermore, the U.S. has been a major driver of forced migration worldwide—creating crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and Africa. Thus, scapegoating immigrants does not resolve the issue but masks the real roots of America’s security crisis, which lie in the country’s destructive, war-driven, and capitalist policies.