Norway and Finland have similar levels of gun ownership, as US but far less gun crime

As the independent non-profit US organisation the Children's Defense Fund has pointed out, gun violence is now the leading cause of US children's deaths

Representational image.

File picture

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Peter Squires   |   Brighton   |   Published 28.05.22

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In the wake of the most recent US mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 pupils and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle, a comparison considering how the US compares with other countries on children's deaths caused by guns is compelling.

As the independent non-profit US organisation the Children's Defense Fund has pointed out, gun violence is now the leading cause of US children's deaths.

It reported that there are nine fatal shootings of children per day, that's one killing every two hours and thirty six minutes.

A minority of these killings involve school or mass shootings, the majority are killings of individual children and link to routine crime and gang violence, and overwhelmingly result in the deaths of African-American and minority children.

The US stands as an extreme outlier among high income countries. The number of children killed by guns is 36.5 times higher in the US, compared to many other high income countries including Austria, Australia, Sweden, England and Wales, according to analysis recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

In recent years international research has also proven conclusively that greater levels of gun ownership are closely associated with higher rates of gun violence.

An audit by the Democrat-leaning policy and research organisation the Centre for American Progress of all 50 US states found a close correlation between the states with the toughest gun laws and states with the lowest gun crime rates.

Meanwhile, international research has compared national gun laws, rates of firearm ownership and gun violence rates.

Interestingly, European societies that come close to US rates of gun ownership, in terms of gun owners per 100 people, (but with hunting rifles and shotguns rather than handguns), such as Finland and Norway, are among the safest societies internationally with regards to gun violence.

Researchers talk about civilised and de-civilising gun cultures, cultures where gun ownership is associated with traditional values of respect and responsibility, and others where gun availability largely empowers the criminally minded and unstable, adding to the violence and chaos.

High levels of social cohesion, low crime rates and internationally high levels of trust and confidence in police and social institutions do appear to reduce levels of gun homicide.

The flipside to this finding, however, is that high gun ownership in countries including Finland, Sweden and Switzerland do have significantly higher rates of suicide using guns.

The UK and Japan, with some of the toughest gun laws in the world, always record the lowest rates of gun homicide, chiefly by virtue of the their virtual prohibition of handguns, the criminal weapon of choice.

By contrast, the death tolls in recent US mass shootings have been very much exacerbated by perpetrators using assault rifles, with their larger magazines and rapid fire capabilities.

Society as a factor

As a result of the new international focus in gun control research (there was a time when the only academic research on firearms took place in the US, and a large part of it funded, directly and indirectly, by the influential US lobbying group National Rifle Association) wider questions came under the spotlight.

Researchers started to focus less upon the gun as an independent variable and instead began to address contexts and the different cultures of gun use.

They also began to acknowledge, as criminologists have always known, that introducing new laws seldom changes anything on its own offenders break laws.

Gun researchers now focus increasingly upon wider gun control regimes which have a big part to play in increasing or reducing levels of gun violence.

These regimes include policing and criminal justice systems, systems of political accountability, welfare safety nets, comprehensive education provision and cultures of trust and confidence.

And as the diagram above suggests, although the US is seen as the most exceptional gun culture among affluent democratic nations, in terms of death rates it is dwarfed by many other poorer and more conflicted societies, such as South Africa, Jamaica and Honduras.

Attempts in the US to confront shootings, but without restricting gun ownership in recent years include scaling up surveillance especially in schools where pupils, parents and teachers form part of a network keeping a watching eye on colleagues and pupils.

They look for signs of trouble and are able to sound the alarm.

More ambitiously, the Violence Project has sought to compile evidence profiles, learning from what we already know about rampage killers and trying to predict where their behaviour, social media engagements and utterances might ring alarm bells.

However, the evidence is now indisputable that more guns in a given country translates directly into more gun violence.

It is significant that the immediate reaction to the Ulvade school massacre has tended to focus on narrow questions of school security and an apparent delay in police intervention, rather than the many underlying factors which make the US such a comparatively dangerous place for children.

The Conversation

Peter Squires,

Professor of Criminology & Public Policy, 

University of Brighton

PTI

Freedom and fear: The foundations of America's deadly gun culture

Agence France-Presse
May 28, 2022

American Revolutionary War reenactors in Boston: the right to own guns was seen by the founders of the United States in the 18th century as essential to overthrowing tyrants(AFP)


It was 1776, the American colonies had just declared their independence from England, and as war raged the founding fathers were deep in debate: should Americans have the right to own firearms as individuals, or just as members of local militia?

Days after 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered in a Texas town, the debate rages on as outsiders wonder why Americans are so wedded to the firearms that stoke such massacres with appalling frequency.

The answer, experts say, lies both in the traditions underpinning the country's winning its freedom from Britain, and most recently, a growing belief among consumers that they need guns for their personal safety.

Over the past two decades -- a period in which more than 200 million guns hit the US market -- the country has shifted from "Gun Culture 1.0," where guns were for sport and hunting, to "Gun Culture 2.0" where many Americans see them as essential to protect their homes and families.

That shift has been driven heavily by advertising by the nearly $20 billion gun industry that has tapped fears of crime and racial upheaval, according to Ryan Busse, a former industry executive.

Recent mass murders "are the byproduct of a gun industry business model designed to profit from increasing hatred, fear, and conspiracy," Busse wrote this week in the online magazine The Bulwark.

Guns and the new nation

For the men designing the new United States in the 1770s and 1780s, there was no question about gun ownership.

They said the monopoly on guns by the monarchies of Europe and their armies was the very source of oppression that the American colonists were fighting.

James Madison, the "father of the constitution," cited "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."

But he and the other founders understood the issue was complex. The new states did not trust the nascent federal government, and wanted their own laws, and own arms.

They recognized people needed to hunt and protect themselves against wild animals and thieves. But some worried more private guns could just increase frontier lawlessness.

Were private guns essential to protect against tyranny? Couldn't local armed militia fulfil that role? Or would militia become a source of local oppression?

In 1791, a compromise was struck in what has become the most parsed phrase in the Constitution, the Second Amendment guaranteeing gun rights:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
1960s gun control

Over the following two centuries, guns became an essential part of American life and myth.

Gun Culture 1.0, as Wake Forest University professor David Yamane describes it, was about guns as critical tools for pioneers hunting game and fending off varmints -- as well as the genocidal conquest of native Americans and the control of slaves.

But by the early 20th century, the increasingly urbanized United States was awash with firearms and experiencing notable levels of gun crime not seen in other countries.

From 1900 to 1964, wrote the late historian Richard Hofstadter, the country recorded more than 265,000 gun homicides, 330,000 suicides, and 139,000 gun accidents.

In reaction to a surge in organized crime violence, in 1934 the federal government banned machine guns and required guns to be registered and taxed.

Individual states added their own controls, like bans on carrying guns in public, openly or concealed.

The public was for such controls: pollster Gallup says that in 1959, 60 percent of Americans supported a complete ban on personal handguns.

The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, brought a push for strenuous regulation in 1968.

But gunmakers and the increasingly assertive National Rifle Association, citing the Second Amendment, prevented new legislation from doing more than implement an easily circumvented restriction on direct mail-order gun sales.

The holy Second amendment

Over the next two decades, the NRA built common cause with Republicans to insist that the Second Amendment was absolute in its protection of gun rights, and that any regulation was an attack on Americans' "freedom."

According to Matthew Lacombe, a Barnard College professor, achieving that involved the NRA creating and advertising a distinct gun-centric ideology and social identity for gun owners.

Gun owners banded together around that ideology, forming a powerful voting bloc, especially in rural areas that Republicans sought to seize from Democrats.

Jessica Dawson, a professor at the West Point military academy, said the NRA made common cause with the religious right, a group that believes in Christianity's primacy in American culture and the constitution.

Drawing "on the New Christian Right's belief in moral decay, distrust of the government, and belief in evil," the NRA leadership "began to use more religiously coded language to elevate the Second Amendment above the restrictions of a secular government," Dawson wrote.
Self-defense

Yet the shift of focus to the Second Amendment did not help gunmakers, who saw flat sales due to the steep decline by the 1990s in hunting and shooting sports.

That paved the way for Gun Culture 2.0 -- when the NRA and the gun industry began telling consumers that they needed personal firearms to protect themselves, according to Busse.

Gun marketing increasingly showed people under attack from rioters and thieves, and hyped the need for personal "tactical" equipment.

The timing paralleled Barack Obama becoming the first African American president and a rise in white nationalism.

"Fifteen years ago, at the behest of the NRA, the firearms industry took a dark turn when it started marketing increasingly aggressive and militaristic guns and tactical gear," Busse wrote.

Meanwhile, many states answered worries about a perceived rise in crime by allowing people to carry guns in public without permits.

In fact, violent crime has trended downward over the past two decades -- though gun-related murders have surged in recent years.

That, said Wake Forest's Yamane, was a key turning point for Gun Culture 2.0, giving a sharp boost to handgun sales, which people of all races bought, amid exaggerated fears of internecine violence.

Since 2009, sales have soared, topping more than 10 million a year since 2013, mainly AR-15-type assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols.

"The majority of gun owners today -- especially new gun owners -- point to self-defense as the primary reason for owning a gun," Yamane wrote.

In Texas, 18-year-olds can’t buy beer or cigarettes – but they are free to buy AR-15s

The massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, highlights disparities in law.

Kiah Collier and Jeremy Schwartz,

 ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

Representational image. | Jewel Samad / AFP

The fact that the gunman responsible for the May 24 massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was able to buy two AR-15s days after his 18th birthday highlights how much easier it is for Americans to purchase rifles than handguns.

Under federal law, Americans buying handguns from licensed dealers must be at least 21, which would have precluded Salvador Ramos from buying that type of weapon. That trumps Texas law, which only requires buyers of any type of firearm to be 18 or older.

Following the massacre at Robb Elementary School, which killed 19 children and two adults, a growing number of lawmakers in Texas and beyond are calling for the minimum age to purchase assault rifles to be raised to 21 years from 18 years. Doing so would require undoing nearly two centuries of more permissive regulations on so-called long guns.

“It is something that could happen at either the state or federal level, but I do not see movement on either front,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Increasing minimum age

Only six states – Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii – have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The majority did so following the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where a then-19-year-old assailant killed 17 people at a high school.

Several states have since faced legal challenges.

The National Rifle Association sought to repeal the Florida law.

“The ban infringes the right of all 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms for the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, even for self-defence in the home,” the National Rifle Association argued in a court filing, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The ban does not just limit the right, it obliterates it.”

Government attorneys, however, argued that because “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional and risky behaviours that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for the legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns”.

A federal judge upheld the law last year – the National Rifle Association is appealing.

A US Court of Appeals recently ruled that California’s version of the law was unconstitutional, though it did uphold a provision that requires adults under 21 to obtain a hunting license before buying a rifle or shotgun.

After the shooting in Uvalde this week, lawmakers in New York and Utah also called on their states to raise the age limit for long gun purchases to 21. US Senator. Dianne Feinstein introduced federal legislation earlier this month – less than a week before the Uvalde shooting – that would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 from 18. The California Democrat said in a statement that it was in response to a shooting that killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket. That gunman also was 18 years old.

“It makes no sense that it is illegal for someone under 21 to buy a handgun or even a beer, yet can legally buy an assault weapon,” she said.

Lindsay Nichols, federal policy director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that increasing the age requirement at the federal level may be more effective because federal authorities can inspect and discipline licensed firearm sellers.

“State authorities often do not have a system in place for enforcing the laws governing” licensed dealers, Nichols said.

Handguns vs rifles

In the hours after the shooting in Uvalde, there was some confusion about what types of firearms Ramos had used. Texas Governor Greg Abbott initially said that Ramos had a handgun and possibly a rifle. That prompted some to speculate that Ramos had been able to get hold of the weapons more easily because of recent changes to the gun laws in Texas, including a bill passed last year that allows Texans to carry handguns without a permit or training. But those early reports turned out to be inaccurate.

After it became clear that the weapon used was a rifle, Texas Democrats questioned why Ramos was able to purchase one at the age of 18.

“Why do we accept a government that allows an 18-year-old to buy an assault rifle, but not tobacco products?” state Representative Nicole Collier, a Fort Worth Democrat who chairs the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said in a statement. “The hypocrisy of government is deafening. We can develop gun policy that does not infringe upon one’s constitutional right, while preserving and protecting life. That is called multitasking and we can do that.”

State Representative Jarvis Johnson, a Houston Democrat, called on Abbott to convene a special session of the Legislature so lawmakers could “pass real gun reforms”, including raising the minimum age to purchase long guns.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

Such a move would reverse a decades-old Texas system that treats handguns differently from long guns, which have long been exempted from state rules on open carry.

The disparate rules date back to the post-Civil War era, when the state – counter to its modern-day reputation – adopted some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

“Despite its stereotype of being a state where cowboys promiscuously tote six-shooters, Texas is one of the few states that absolutely prohibits the bearing of pistols by private individuals,” wrote firearms attorney Stephen Halbrook in a 1989 Baylor Law Review article, six years before former Texas Governor George W Bush relaxed rules on handguns considerably.

Following spasms of violence that were then plaguing the young state in the 19th century, lawmakers “started specifically targeting weapons that they equated with crime”, said Texas historian Brennan Rivas, who is writing a book about the state’s early gun laws. “They equated bowie knives, daggers and pistols with interpersonal violence and crime.”

Muskets, rifles and shotguns, by comparison, were excluded because they were used for hunting or participating in a militia.

“They did not consider long guns to be deadly weapons,” Rivas said. “Those had valuable uses. Whereas these other weapons were kind of like a plague on polite society.”

Lawmakers of that time could not have envisioned that long guns would evolve from lumbering hunting rifles into AR-15s capable of firing dozens of rounds per minute, Rivas added.

But any tighter requirements appear unlikely to pass in Texas.

Just last year, following high-profile massacres in El Paso and in Midland and Odessa in 2019, lawmakers approved a variety of measures that loosened gun regulations. In addition to authorising the carrying of handguns in public without a permit or training, the laws ban the governor from limiting gun sales during an emergency and allow gun owners to bring their weapons into hotel rooms.

During a Wednesday press conference at Uvalde High School, Abbott repeated a claim he and other Republican state leaders have often made, that mental health issues are to blame for the streak of mass shootings, not lax gun regulations. Officials conceded that they were not aware that the gunman had any criminal or mental health issues.

“The ability of an 18-year-old to buy a long gun has been in place in the state of Texas for more than 60 years,” Abbott said. “And why is it that for the majority of those 60 years we did not have school shootings? And why is it that we do now?”

This article first appeared on ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

How The NRA Evolved From Backing A Ban On Machine Guns To Blocking Almost All Gun Restrictions Today

The NRA’s more than 150-year history spans three distinct eras.

(WHITE) People browse firearms in an exhibit hall at the NRA's annual convention on Saturday, May 5, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Loren ELLIOTT / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOREN ELLIOTT/AFP via Getty Images)
By Robert Spitzer
|
May 28, 2022 

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, just 10 days apart, are stirring the now-familiar national debate over guns seen after the tragic 2012 and 2018 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida.

Inevitably, if also understandably, many Americans are blaming the National Rifle Association for thwarting stronger gun laws that might have prevented these two recent tragedies and many others. And despite the proximity in time and location to the Texas shooting, the NRA is proceeding with its plans to hold its annual convention in Houston on May 27-29, 2022. The featured speakers include former President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican.

After spending decades researching and writing about how and why the NRA came to hold such sway over national gun policies, I’ve seen this narrative take unexpected turns in the last few years that raise new questions about the organization’s reputation for invincibility.

Three phases

The NRA’s more than 150-year history spans three distinct eras.

At first the group was mainly concerned with marksmanship. It later played a relatively constructive role regarding safety-minded gun ownership restrictions before turning into a rigid politicized force.

The NRA was formed in 1871 by two Civil War veterans from Northern states who had witnessed the typical soldier’s inability to handle guns.

The organization initially leaned on government support, which included subsidies for shooting matches and surplus weaponry. These freebies, which lasted until the 1970s, gave gun enthusiasts a powerful incentive to join the NRA.

The NRA played a role in fledgling political efforts to formulate state and national gun policy in the 1920s and 1930s after Prohibition-era liquor trafficking stoked gang warfare. It backed measures like requiring a permit to carry a gun and even a gun purchase waiting period.

And the NRA helped shape the National Firearms Act of 1934, with two of its leaders testifying before Congress at length regarding this landmark legislation. They supported, if grudgingly, its main provisions, such as restricting gangster weapons, which included a national registry for machine guns and sawed-off shotguns and taxing them heavily. But they opposed handgun registration, which was stripped out of the nation’s first significant national gun law.

Decades later, in the legislative battle held in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and amid rising concerns about crime, the NRA opposed another national registry provision that would have applied to all firearms. Congress ultimately stripped it from the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Throughout this period, however, the NRA remained primarily focused on marksmanship, hunting and other recreational activities, although it did continue to voice opposition to new gun laws, especially to its membership. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7460CZcGJRY?wmode=transparent&start=0 NPR’s Ron Elving recounts the NRA’s history.
A sharp right turn

By the mid-1970s, a dissident group within the NRA believed that the organization was losing the national debate over guns by being too defensive and not political enough. The dispute erupted at the NRA’s 1977 annual convention, where the dissidents deposed the old guard.

From this point forward, the NRA became ever more political and strident in its defense of so-called “gun rights,” which it increasingly defined as nearly absolute under the Second Amendment.

One sign of how much the NRA had changed: The Second Amendment right to bear arms never came up in the 166 pages of congressional testimony regarding the 1934 gun law. Today, the organization treats those words as its mantra, constantly citing them.

And until the mid-1970s, the NRA supported waiting periods for handgun purchases. Since then, however, it has opposed them. It fought vehemently against the ultimately successful enactment of a five-business-day waiting period and background checks for handgun purchases in 1993.

The NRA’s influence hit a zenith during George W. Bush’s gun-friendly presidency, which embraced the group’s positions. Among other things, his administration let the ban on assault weapons expire, and it supported the NRA’s top legislative priority: enactment in 2005 of special liability protections for the gun industry, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Having a White House ally isn’t everything

Despite past successes, the NRA has suffered from a series of mostly self-inflicted blows that have precipitated an existential crisis for the organization.

Most significantly, an investigation by the New York Attorney General, filed in 2020, has revealed extensive allegations of rampant cronyism, corruption, sweetheart deals and fraud. Partly as a result of these revelations, NRA membership has apparently declined to roughly 4.5 million, down from a high of about 5 million.

Despite this trend, however, the grassroots gun community is no less committed to its agenda of opposition to new gun laws. Indeed, the Pew Research Center’s findings in 2017 suggested that about 14 million people identify with the group. By any measure, that’s a small minority out of nearly 260 million U.S. voters.

But support for gun rights has become a litmus test for Republican conservativism and is baked into a major political party’s agenda. This laserlike focus on gun issues continues to enhance the NRA’s influence even when the organization faces turmoil. This means that the protection and advancement of gun rights are propelled by the broader conservative movement, so that the NRA no longer needs to carry the ball by itself.

Like Bush, Trump maintained a cozy relationship with the NRA. It was among his 2016 presidential bid’s most enthusiastic backers, contributing US$31 million to his presidential campaign.

When Trump directed the Justice Department to draft a rule banning bump stocks, and indicated his belated support for improving background checks for gun purchases after the Parkland shooting, he was sticking with NRA-approved positions. He also supported arming teachers, another NRA proposal.

Only one sliver of light emerged between the Trump administration and the NRA: his apparent willingness to consider raising the minimum age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21 – which has not happened. In 2022, a year after Trump left office, 18-year-olds, including the gunmen allegedly responsible for the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, were able to legally purchase firearms.

In politics, victory usually belongs to whoever shows up. And by showing up, the NRA has managed to strangle every federal effort to restrict guns since the Newtown shooting.

Nevertheless, the NRA does not always win. At least 25 states had enacted their own new gun regulations within five years of that tragedy.
Supreme Court ruling’s repercussions

These latest mass shootings may stir gun safety supporters to mobilize public outrage and turn out voters favoring stricter firearm regulations during the 2022 midterm elections.

But there is a wild card: The Supreme Court will soon rule on New York State Rifle & Pistol Club v. Bruen, the most significant case regarding gun rights it has considered in years. It’s likely that the court will strike down a long-standing New York pistol permit law, broadening the right to carry guns in public across the United States.

Such a decision could galvanize gun safety supporters while also emboldening gun rights activists – making the debate about guns in America even more tumultuous.

Robert Spitzer is a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the Political Science Department at State University of New York College at Cortland.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MISOGYNY & TOXIC MASCULINITY
Texas school shooter Salvador Ramos was ‘violent towards women,’ classmates say

By Eileen AJ Connelly
May 28, 2022 

Keanna Baxter spurned a come-on from the “eerie” Salvador Ramos after she witnessed a friend who dated him grow frightened of their volatile fellow Uvalde High School student.

“He dated my ex-friend. And then they broke up,” Baxter, 17, told the San Antonio Express News. “And then he tried to date me after that, but I told him no. Because he always had this kind of eerie sense about him.”

Ramos, 18, on Tuesday slaughtered 19 elementary school students and two teachers when he burst into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in America’s deadliest school shooting since 2012.

Ramos was unpredictable and violent when he was dating her friend, Baxter said.

“She told me that he was scary,” Baxter said. “Like he would get super violent. And when he would lose his temper, she would literally be scared for her life, basically.

“He would send her these really nasty messages, where he’d go from super sweet to screaming at her back to super sweet.”

“He was overall just aggressive, like violent,” Baxter added. “He would try and fight women. He would try and fight anyone who told him no — if he didn’t get his way, he’d go crazy. He was especially violent towards women.”

Mourners gather at a memorial at City of Uvalde Town Square following the mass shooting.

James Keivom for NY Post

One of those women was Crystal Foutz, 17, also a Uvalde High School student.

Ramos threatened to harm her in comments on Instagram, after he got into a fight on social media with her ex-boyfriend.

Children run to safety during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News via REUTERS

“It was just harassing. And I never like provoked him or anything like that,” Foutz said Friday. “He was aggressive for no reason. … I just blocked him.”

Salvador Ramos was killed by police following the rampage.salv8dor_/Instagram

Foutz also heard about Ramos harassing his former girlfriend after they broke up.

“Another friend of mine, when she worked with (Ramos), there was an incident between a girlfriend and a boyfriend — (Ramos) tried to fight the girlfriend,” Foutz told the Express News. “And it really was over nothing. Just because he was aggressive like that.”

It’s not the first time his contemporaries described volatile behavior from Ramos.

Santos Valdez Jr., 18, said they were close until the future gunman went off the rails. Ramos showed up one day at a park where they played basketball with cuts all over his face. At first told Valdez he was scratched by his cat, then revealed the truth – he had cut himself “just for fun.”

There’s a video circulating of Ramos holding up a dead cat in the passenger seat of a car, said Baxter. Foutz said she saw TikTok videos Ramos posted of himself punching walls while wearing boxing gloves and declaring he could fight anyone.

Ramos posted about his guns on social media.salv8dor_/Instagram

“He was just very like pushy,” Foutz recalled. “If you would ask for something or if he was trying to pick on you or he was trying to tell you something and you didn’t give him a reaction, it would make him angry … (He was) very pushy, very aggressive.”

Rumors circulating among the high school students say Ramos was angry that he wouldn’t be able to graduate. Reports have said he dropped out of high school, but Baxter saw him in the school last month. Foutz remembered seeing him on campus last fall.

“To be honest, I didn’t think twice about this kid,” Baxter said. “I barely knew this kid for like a year. He kind of popped out of nowhere.”

Both girls called Ramos a “loner” with “no friends.”

“The people that did try and give him a chance to be friends with, he scared them away,” said Foutz. “He was a bully, really. If you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was a bully to you.”

“He didn’t have any friends,” Baxter said. “To be honest, no one ever spoke to him. Just because people were genuinely afraid of him.”

A law enforcement officer displays a graphic showing the route Ramos took into Robb Elementary School.EPA

In fact, some students thought that if there was a target for this type of tragedy, it would be the high school.

“We all thought maybe they’re going to do it to the high school — because we’ve gotten threats before,” she said. “But not to the kids. It should have been us. There was no reason to go and hurt those kids.

Salvador Ramos’s home being searched by the FBI.

Kevin C. Downs for NY Post

“None of us are like that. None of us have that kind of hate in our heart to do something like that or know how this ever could have happened.”

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE

Blaming mass shootings on the nation's mental health crisis is 'harmful', advocates say

1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness each year, estimates show.

By Arielle Mitropoulos
May 28, 2022, 

A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School sign following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, May 26, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

‘The heartbreak is palpable’: Nation mourns Texas elementary school shooting
ABC News’ Linsey Davis reports on the devastation in Uvalde felt around the country as the nation reckons with the latest school mass shooting.

Tuesday marked yet another tragic day in America, after a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in rural Texas, leaving 19 children and two teachers dead, and dozens of family members and friends in mourning.

As the nation reels from the tragedy, politicians and pundits have been pointing fingers as to who and what is to blame for these relatively rare but increasingly common public mass casualty events.

At the forefront of the debate is the role of mental health in these incidents, with some legislators asserting that such atrocities are the result of the nation’s mental health crisis.

"We have a problem with mental health illness in this community," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Wednesday.

However, physicians, psychiatrists and other leading experts told ABC News that it is inaccurate to assert that "mental health issues" are solely or primarily responsible for the United States’ ongoing rash of gun violence.

Instead, while experts say some aspects of mental illness are associated with mass violence, they insist that it is truly a multi-layer and complex crisis, driven by a confluence of other factors as well, such as widespread access to firearms, stalled gun reform and exposure to increased stressors and crises.

“There is no ‘the mentally ill.’ It’s all of us. It’s our kids, our families, our uncles, our cousins,” Joel Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist who served on the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Reducing Gun Violence told ABC News.

“These events slap us in the face… This is a public health crisis, and we should think of it as a public health crisis," Dvoskin said in reference to the gun violence and Tuesday's tragedy in Uvalde.

In fact, a 2018 report of the FBI on the characteristics of active shooters found that only 25% of shooters from 2000-2013 had confirmed mental illness.

"There are important and complex considerations regarding mental health, both because it is the most prevalent stressor and because of the common but erroneous inclination to assume that anyone who commits an active shooting must de facto be mentally ill," the report said.

"Absent specific evidence, careful consideration should be given to social and contextual factors that might interact with any mental health issue before concluding that an active shooting was 'caused' by mental illness. In short, declarations that all active shooters must simply be mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful."

Millions experiencing mental illness in the US

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness, defined as a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling or mood, each year, approximately 52.9 million Americans. In 2020, 1 in 10 young adults, between the ages of 18 and 25, were found to experience serious mental illness.

With millions of Americans grappling with mental health challenges, doctors and public health experts, interviewed by ABC News, questioned whether it would be feasible to rely on the nation's current mental health infrastructure to stop would-be shooters.

“The notion of blaming this on the mentally ill is an intentionally disingenuous scapegoating of people who have enough problems already -- that they don't need to be insulted by politicians who were looking for a way to avoid a more complicated discussion,” Dvoskin said.

Those who live with mental illness are 10 times more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, he added.

“Very few of these mass shooters have had a diagnosed mental disorder of any kind. That doesn't mean that they were doing fine. I think the better rhetoric to use [instead of] mentally ill is people who are in crisis. Anybody who's in a crisis of despair or rage… that doesn't mean they're going to shoot anybody but they ought to get help,” Dvoskin said.

On Wednesday, the National Alliance on Mental Illness also pushed back on the notion that mental illness is at fault in this shooting or with other similar crises.

“Mental illness is not the problem. It is incorrect and harmful to link mental illness and gun violence, which is often the case following a mass shooting,” the organization wrote. “Pointing to mental illness doesn’t get us closer as a nation to solving the problem and doing so leads to discrimination and stigma against those with mental illness — who are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. People across the globe live with mental illness, but only in the U.S. do we have an epidemic of senseless and tragic mass shootings,” they said.

Globally, estimates suggest around 1-in-7 people have one or more mental or substance use disorders.

However, even with the pandemic impacting people across the globe, the United States is unique in its epidemic of gun violence, with the nation reporting more violent deaths — largely driven by firearms — compared to other high-income countries.

One study found that the U.S. gun homicide rates were 25 times higher than in other high-income countries.

"If mental illness were the simple cause, you'd see mass shootings happen all over the developed world," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said this week.

Politicians fight over the role of mental illness in mass casualty incidents

Many politicians on the right, who are ardent defenders of gun rights, point to mental health as the principal issue at hand.

Although officials reported that the gunman had “no known mental health history,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stressed on Wednesday that mental health issues must be addressed in order to evade such tragedies in the future.

“We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else as a mental health challenge, period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it,” Abbott argued during a press conference.

Following other mass shootings in years prior, former President Donald J. Trump, shared a similar sentiment in placing the blame on mental illness.

"Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun," Trump said in the days after two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in 2019.

Community members embrace and mourn together at a vigil for the victims in the mass shooting at Rob Elementary School, May 25, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

However, on the other side of the aisle, many Democrats have rejected such an argument as an excuse to not address gun reform legislation.

“Spare me the bull---- about mental illness,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, who, when he arrived in Washington, D.C., first represented the district home to Sandy Hook Elementary. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness.”

Mass shooting incidents increased during the pandemic, data shows

In the last two years, conversations around mental health and the potential impact on mass casualty incidents have been augmented by the onset of the pandemic.

Since the early days of the pandemic, officials have been warning that COVID-19 could cause spur an uptick in violence across the country.

An internal Department of Homeland Security memo in early 2020, obtained by ABC News last summer, warned that the emotional, mental and financial strain, exacerbated by the new pandemic, combined with social isolation may "increase the vulnerability of some citizens to mobilize to violence."

Thus, the question of what role COVID-19 may have had in exacerbating these already existing issues surrounding mental health, isolation, and radicalization, is one that groups of public health experts have been investigating as the frequency of these mass shooting events has increased.

Dr. Anupam B. Jena, Associate Professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, who has been studying the rash of mass shootings across the country, told ABC News that since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a clear increase in the number of mass shootings, defined as shootings in which 4 or more people were killed or injured, not counting the perpetrator, when compared to previous years. Totals for 2021 were even higher than those seen in 2020, according to Jena's research.

“It's very clear that something has changed during the pandemic that has led to an increase in mass shootings and the timing of the increase is timed, really at the start of the pandemic,” Jena said. “I feel pretty confident saying the increase in mass shootings that we've observed in the last year and a half two years is a result of changes that have occurred during the pandemic."

CDC data, released earlier this month, found the overall gun homicides increased 35% across the country during the first year of the pandemic to the highest level in 25 years.

According to an analysis, conducted by Jena, there were 343 more mass shootings "above expected," during that period, leading to an additional 217 deaths, and 1,498 people injured, between April 2020 and July 2021.

An FBI report released on Tuesday also revealed a 52.5% increase in active shooter incidents between 2020 and 2021. Such incidents have increased by nearly 100% since 2017.

Active Shooter Incidents 2017-2021
ABC News / FBI

“The COVID-19 pandemic imposed sudden and additional psychological and financial strains across society through fear of death, social isolation, economic hardship, and general uncertainty,” and thus, the tremendous tensions and stresses caused by the pandemic could have led to an uptick in mass shootings,” Jena and his co-author wrote in a September study.

Economic and social factors played a significant role in the likelihood of a person committing a mass shooting, Jena argued.

“There's not a person who hasn't been disrupted by the pandemic really, and so the question is does it have a particularly pronounced effect on people who would be prone to committing acts of mass violence, and it seems to be that way,” Jena said.

As with COVID-19, there is a “contagious” nature with mass shootings, according to David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, with incidents at times having a domino effect, one occurring after the other.

The pandemic has had ‘enormous’ effects on mental health

The pandemic itself has had “enormous” effects on the mental health of people across the country, Hemingway said.

Public health experts say social disruption caused by the lockdown, and by all the changes in the way society operates, has affected everyone, regardless of race, gender or age.

“It's been a time of terrible disruption,” Dr. Rebecca W. Brendel, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, told ABC News. “All the institutions and the support and the connectedness that holds us together, was taken away overnight, and it's simply just not back the same way again. How could it not disrupt our lives in ways we're only beginning to understand?”

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott is accompanied by Senator Ted Cruz as he speaks to the media at Robb Elementary school, the day after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the school in Uvalde, Texas, May 25, 2022.
Marco Bello/Reuters

The vast majority of attackers in mass attack incidents — 87% — had at least one “significant stressor,” defined as significant medical issues, turbulent home lives, work and school issues, strained relationships, and personal issues, within five years leading up to the attack, according to a United States Secret Service report on Mass Attacks in Public Spaces.

However, the USSS reported noted that "the vast majority of individuals in the United States who display the symptoms of mental illness discussed.... do not commit acts of crime or violence."

People rely on regularity to protect the predictability, the connectedness of our institutions and our relationships, for a normal healthy development, Brendel said.

MORE: As Gov. Abbott places shooting blame on mental health, what has Texas done to address it?

“Part of normal development is learning how to interact with other people and learning about one's place in the world, from being around other people and navigating relationships in person,” she said, and a number of things have gotten in the way of that normal development.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 people reported that the pandemic had a significant impact on their mental health, including 45% of people with mental illness.

Young people have been particularly affected, data shows. During the pandemic, more than one-third of high school students in the U.S. reported experiencing poor mental health during the pandemic, while nearly half of students, 44%, reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless in the past year, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, comforts families outside of the Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Dario Lopez-mills/AP

One significant culprit that continues to aggravate these feelings of loneliness is social media, said Brendel. Although it serves as a way to keep in touch, it can also lead to problematic situations.

“We're seeing kids who get their information, or see their friends only through social media posts, and we know that people can portray themselves only as they wish to be seen,” Brendel said, adding that this leads to situations where people may feel that their lives were empty or not as good as the perfect lives they saw on social media, leading to increased feelings of isolation, and making it even more difficult to reach out to others.

“We know that when we're in our deepest despair, with being isolated, [social media] makes it worse and it is a big risk factor. We're in for added trouble,” Brendel said.

What to do

As officials look for answers, experts say there are no simple solutions to such complicated issues.

Top of mind for many mass shooting health experts is addressing the overarching issues with gun control reform in the U.S.

According to polling from Pew Research, nearly half of adults — 49% — say there would be fewer mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally.

“The United States is such a blaming society. Once we blame somebody then we can say, ‘oh, our work is done.’ And the answer is no, you haven't done, and prevented anything,” Hemingway said. “You want a system so it's hard for people to get these lethal weapons. It's hard for people to use these lethal weapons, and it's unlikely for people to be so enraged that they want to use these lethal weapons.”

People react outside the Staff Sgt Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had been transported from Robb Elementary School after a shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Marco Bello/Reuters

Stigmatization of mental illness is only deterring people from seeking help, experts said.

Thus, ensuring those in need are able to access the care — for mental health, crisis, or stress related issues — without fear of being ostracized or judged, will also be critical.

In getting people the help they need, Dvoskin added that “you would prevent some mass shootings — you would just never know it because you don't know which particular person in crisis is going to do something that's horrific.”

“When you blame mass homicides on mentally ill, all you're doing is dramatically increasing stigma. People don't want to join the group of people who are responsible for harm,” Dvoskin said. “Those statements not only are wrong but they are directly harmful to citizens who might be struggling with a mental illness, but they haven't asked for help, and why would they when we stigmatize it so drastically.”

After living as a woman for 20 years, she was jailed with men

When Ms Williams spoke to a counsellor, she said, she was told ‘boys will be boys’ and to just wait out her time

Rachel Weiner

Lawsuits have led to changes in Washington, D.C., jail and in Massachusetts; some states have proactively mandated inmates be housed according to their gender identity
(Getty Images)

When Kesha Williams went to jail in Fairfax County, Virginia, in November 2018, she had been living as a woman for two decades. At first, she was put with female inmates and given women’s underwear.

But when she asked about getting the hormone treatments she had been taking for 15 years, jail officials learned she was transgender and had not had genital surgery.

From then on, she said in a federal lawsuit, she was housed with men, harassed by deputies during searches, and ogled and groped by inmates when she was showering or walking through the jail.

Her bras were taken away, she said, and she was told she couldn’t buy one at the commissary. Her hormone treatments were not provided for weeks at a time.

When she spoke to a counsellor, she said, she was told “boys will be boys” and to wait out her time.

Instead, before even leaving the jail, she contacted a lawyer. “I have to fight for the next girl, every other girl who has to go through this,” Williams, 41, said in an interview. “You’re being physically, mentally abused.”

Williams, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, is suing under a relatively new interpretation of disability law that has been embraced in some federal courts and met with scepticism in others. The US Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit is now weighing the case after a panel heard arguments for it in March.

It’s part of a national legal push for trans rights to be considered under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and for trans women in prison to be housed with other women.

Amy Whelan, a senior staff attorney with the National Centre for Lesbian Rights, said genitalia still determines housing in most prisons despite federal regulations and research showing the high risk of sexual abuse trans women face in men’s prisons.

“Jails are still very behind in terms of understanding how important it is to move people, and understanding the medical issues involved,” she said. “It’s putting the safety and security of these institutions at risk.”

Lawsuits have led to changes in Washington DC and Massachusetts; some states have proactively mandated inmates be housed according to their gender identity. But there has also been pushback against those policies, including a lawsuit in California arguing that they violate cisgender women’s rights.

The US Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit has ruled that an Idaho prisoner was entitled to gender confirmation surgery under the constitution, but the fourth circuit is the first appellate panel to specifically consider the disability question.

When the ADA became law in 1990, “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments” were explicitly excluded from protection from discrimination. Courts – including the first federal judge to review Williams’s case – have pointed to that language in dismissing cases alleging discrimination against trans people.

Through attorneys, Fairfax officials said the same. “To say that circumstances alleged by Ms Williams are far from ideal would minimise the struggles she and other trans people face,” they wrote, but “her allegations are insufficient to show that she is a qualified individual with a disability”.

A spokesman for the Fairfax sheriff’s office, which runs the jail, said it would be inappropriate to comment while the case is pending.

Williams and others argue the law’s authors misunderstood trans identity so thoroughly that the law’s exception does not describe it. Added at the urging of conservatives, the exclusions to the law also included paedophilia, voyeurism and exhibitionism under “sexual behaviour disorders”.

The desire to live as the opposite sex is no longer labelled by psychiatrists as a disorder to be treated; instead, the mental problem is the stress of being born in a body that does not align with one’s gender identity. “The disorder that my client now has did not exist, at least diagnostically” in 1990, her attorney Joshua Erlich said. “We must apply a modern understanding.”

Determined to file a lawsuit, Williams connected with Erlich before leaving Fairfax custody. She had done brief stints in jails before. But she had never had an experience as she did in Fairfax, which she said arose from agreeing to help a drug-dealing boyfriend who turned out to be working a sting operation.

“I did what I did, I’ll go to jail – but I’m being penalised for who I am, as well,” she said. “They need to change their system; they have to understand we’re in a different time.”

The Washington Post

HOMOPHOBIC MURDER OKED BY US COURT

Ex-college linebacker acquitted after killing male Tinder date who posed as woman

by Ryan King, Breaking News Reporter
| May 28, 2022 

Former Virginia Tech football player Isimemen Etute was acquitted Friday after beating a man whom he mistook as a woman to death in a Tinder date gone awry.

A jury found Etute, 19, not guilty of second-degree murder charges for the death of Jerry Smith, 40, in 2021, determining that Etute acted in self-defense when Smith seemingly lurched for an object near his bed, where a knife was later discovered by police.

"I think he's earned the right to go back to school and further his academic and sports career," Etute's lawyer, James Turk, said after the ruling, per ESPN. "I think the school that ends up taking him is going to get probably a lot wiser and a much smarter and an exceptional athlete."

Etute went ballistic on Smith upon discovering he was a man, having expected his Tinder date to be female, prosecutors alleged. His physical stature over Smith, with Etute weighing over 50 pounds more than him, cast doubt on the notion Smith was grasping for a weapon because Smith did not pose a physical threat to him, they argued, according to the New York Post.

"That's a big disparity," Montgomery County Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Patrick Jensen said in reference to his weight and height advantage, according to the Associated Press.

Etute and Smith first connected via Tinder in April 2021, according to court testimony. Smith posed as a lady named "Angie Renee," and the two met on April 10. He initially left the meeting amid concerns over Smith concealing his face and keeping the room dark but later returned and received oral sex from Smith and a $50 gift, according to reports.

On May 31, a teammate of Etute's went to Smith's apartment but left after feeling uncomfortable about the situation. Etute and two of his teammates opted to return to Smith's apartment later that day to try to ascertain Smith's gender, reports added. Etute entered the apartment alone while his teammates waited outside, and after Etute "felt around" to determine Smith's gender, Smith groped him, prompting a smack from Etute, the former linebacker testified. Etute believed that Smith was trying to reach for some sort of weapon such as a gun and struck him a few more times in response, he testified. He confessed to stomping on Smith's face as he left.

Etute acknowledged that he did not see the knife at the time, but police officers later discovered it under the mattress, reports said. The former Virginia Tech student broke almost all the bones in Smith's face and he suffered bleeding of the brain, a medical examiner determined.

The jury deliberated on the case for three hours before reaching a decision.

Etute was suspended from Virginia Tech and the football team after prosecutors unveiled charges against him last year. His lawyer argued the incident should be a lesson for users of apps such as Tinder.

"It should be an eye-opener not just for college athletes, but any young people using these social media platforms," he said. "They can be extremely useful, but they can be extremely dangerous."

Pic of the Week: Germany’s first trans military official put on trial over a dating site profile

The military said the Tinder profile was a violation of the duty of servicewomen and men to behave "properly" outside of duty.

By Bil Browning 

Saturday, May 28, 2022

25 May 2022, Saxony, Leipzig:

 Anastasia Biefang, commander of the German Armed Forces, stands in a room of the Federal Administrative Court. The instance is hearing a disciplinary measure against Biefang because of her profile in a dating portal. The disciplinary measure had been imposed because the female soldier had not fulfilled her duty of proper off-duty conduct. The commander is defending herself against this.

Photo: dpa/picture alliance via Getty I

Anastasia Biefang, the German military’s first transgender officer, has been forced to defend her Tinder profile in court – and lost.

The high-ranking commander was disciplined for a violation of the duty of servicewomen and men to behave “properly” outside of duty. 

The military service senate of the Federal Administrative Court decided that her private dating profile was too spicy despite a decided lack of prosecutions of straight men who regularly post much more explicit content.

The dastardly expression of sexuality on a dating site read: “Spontaneous, lustful, trans*, open relationship looking for sex. All genders welcome.”

“We think that a commander must also choose his words on the Internet,” the presiding judge said in the verdict. “Formulations that raise doubts about the character’s integrity must be avoided.”

After the verdict, Biefang told reporters that they still didn’t see what was untrue or misleading about her profile, saying, “In the future, I’ll probably have my managers check my profiles to see if that’s legal.”

A REVOLUTION OF YOUTH AND WOMEN

‘Our friends didn’t die in vain’: Sudan’s activists aim to topple military regime

In the struggle for democracy in Sudan, protesters in Khartoum demonstrate against military rule in March this year. Photograph: Marwan Ali/AP

Three years after protests toppled Omar al-Bashir, activists hope to bring down another government with little more than phones, placards and motorbikes

Jason Burke & Zeinab Mohammed Salih

in Khartoum

Sat 28 May 2022 

A small house on a street in central Khartoum, lost among the dusty blocks of offices and cheap hotels but not difficult to find. On the wall outside, a slightly faded portrait of the smiling young man who once lived here: Abdulsalam Kisha.

Inside, half a dozen men and a woman are meeting, planning, eating, joking. These self-styled “revolutionaries” do not belong to a political party, or even a defined organisation. Instead, they are part of a coalition of hundreds of grassroots associations across Sudan’s towns and cities coordinated by activists who hope to bring down a powerful military regime with little more than placards, smartphones and motorbikes. The efforts of these “resistance committees” in Sudan are being watched – with hope by many, anxiety by autocratic leaders – across a swathe of the Middle East and Africa.

Their efforts are not without risk, however. Nearly 1,600 pro-democracy campaigners in Sudan have been arrested in the past eight months, and 96 killed in a series of protests. Almost every weekend, the police deploy shotguns and teargas to clear streets of barricades and demonstrators. More than 100 were injured in three days last week alone.

Among those meeting in Kisha’s house are a 58-year-old housewife and her 63-year-old retired agricultural engineer husband whose involvement in such dangerous and committed activism would seem astonishing unless you knew of their history. Kisha, a charismatic and popular 25-year-old law student, was killed by a bullet during the uprising that ended the 30-year rule of Sudan’s autocratic Islamist leader, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019, and appeared to usher in a new era of democracy. The house is where Kisha grew up, clambering across the cluttered courtyard, playing in the dusty street outside, leaving to attend school then university and finally to walk 100m to the protest where he died. The middle-aged couple are his parents.

This week, on the third anniversary of their son’s death, they will take to the streets yet again, shouting themselves hoarse, evading police checkposts, chanting the protest songs with the others, most 30 or even 40 years younger.

“What else can we do?” they said. “We are the parents of a martyr. We have to be there to inspire the others.”

Others in the room, a generation younger, explain their participation similarly. “We have to go on and risk our lives, so that our friends did not die in vain,” said one.

For most of those involved with the resistance committees, the campaign is their third battle for democracy in Sudan, a strategically located country of 44 million people which has suffered a series of autocratic regimes and wars since declaring independence from Britain in 1955.

The first such effort was waged over almost a decade to overthrow Bashir. Then, for a few short weeks from April 2019, came a second: to force democracy on the soldiers and paramilitaries who took power after the dictator’s fall. This ended bloodily. At least 200 were killed and more injured when an unprecedented sit-in was brutally broken up.

“It was a very beautiful moment when Bashir fell. We dreamed of a Sudan where everyone was free to be and say what they wanted … But looking back now, we were very naive,” said “Carbino”, a leader of a resistance committee in south Khartoum.

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president who was ousted in 2019. 

Photograph: Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the brutality, the protests of 2019 did win a partial victory, with Sudan’s powerful army and allied paramilitaries forced to concede the creation of a mixed civilian-military administration that was supposed to prepare the way for elections. Once again, however, hopes of a better future were dashed. A military coup in October ended any dream of democracy, and so the resistance committees formed to fight for a third time for radical change.

“This time we have our eyes wide open, and will not accept anything other than all our demands: peace, justice and freedom,” Carbino said.

This new effort is a scrappy affair, unlike the big demonstrations that brought down Bashir or the protracted mass sit-in that followed. It is a campaign of pop-up protests, running battles with the police, graffiti on walls at night, clandestine leaflet deliveries, demonstrations organised only hours before and instructions circulated on social media.

On a Saturday night, it is the turn of the resistance committee in Burri, a middle-class neighbourhood near Khartoum’s international airport. As the barricades of bricks and rocks go up, the shutters on the shops come down. A grocer stays open a few minutes longer to allow housewives to run last-minute errands for sugar, cooking oil or bread. Then the young men fill the streets and wait for the police.

“We have to do this, for freedom,” said Omar, 27 years old and jobless, as he watched the first attempts of the police to disperse the protesters. Heavy armoured trucks manoeuvre, pushing forward with squads of policemen alongside.

That a sharp wind blows the clouds of teargas back towards the advancing vehicles does not please Omar.

“That’s bad … It means they will use live ammunition instead,” he warned, and soon after there is a volley of shots. The teenage protesters fall back, then gather their resolve and return to the street. Flames from burning tyres flicker in the dusk. And so it goes on, through the evening.

In moments of relative calm, women gather errant children and complain about the disruption. Many worry too. “We want this to stop … Our young people are dying,” said one, as she sheltered in a neighbour’s yard.

The rhythm of the protests is irregular, but preparations are well-rehearsed. A baking powder solution helps deal with teargas and so, the demonstrators say, do anti-Covid masks. Then there are goggles and builder’s hard hats that are supposed to protect against shotgun pellets. Those with motorbikes stand ready to pick up the injured, taking them to local clinics where they are treated by sympathetic doctors.

Ijlal Syed Bashera, wearing goggles to counter the teargas, at a protest in Omdurman. Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer

A day after the protests in Burri, it is the turn of Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city just across the river Nile. Kisha’s parents are planning to join protests there, though may be stopped either by police checkpoints or arthritis.

By 3pm, despite temperatures above 40C, crowds have gathered on Shaheed Abdulazeem street. The makeshift rock barricades are already up amid drumming and chanting. There are teenagers from the neighbourhood, lots of students, and a core of very determined older protesters.

Momin Ahmed, 27, was shot in January at a demonstration and lost most of the use of his arm. “We are thousands…[so] I am not afraid,” he said. Ijlal Syed Bashera, 43, has brought her two children, aged nine and 12, to “learn the true meaning of patriotism”. Unemployed despite degrees in politics and computing, she has been protesting since 2013 in each of the three efforts for democracy and has been arrested three times too.

“It is simple. We want a better life. There is total economic collapse. There is no freedom. So obviously we protest,” she said.

Some doubt the depth and breadth of the protesters support, painting them as relatively well-off urbanites out of touch with Sudan’s often deeply conservative population. There is little doubt that the current unrest is restricted to bigger towns and cities, and that, even in Khartoum, it is not mobilising masses or causing significant disruption. On Africa Street, a broad thoroughfare not far from the Omdurman protests, patrons enjoy fried fish, stewed beans and kebabs in packed restaurants despite the acrid smell of teargas on the evening breeze.

Pro-democracy activists claim such apparent apathy is deceptive, and that they have genuine grassroots support. Osman Basri, a lawyer who represents detained campaigners, said a combination of holidays, the deliberately decentralised strategy and repression had depressed numbers.

“What you see is the tip of the iceberg. There are the visible protesters, but a huge mass of people who support us but don’t show it,” he said,

There are good reasons to remain unnoticed by security forces. Emergency laws currently in place allow arbitrary arrest and detention. Abuses are systematic.

“I was held for six weeks and was never charged, saw no lawyer, could not call my family. When I went on hunger strike to complain I was put in a small cell called the fridge, where an air conditioner was kept on maximum and lights on all day and night,” said “Rasta”, a member of a central Khartoum resistance committee.

Others report chronic overcrowding, brutal beatings, sleep deprivation, repeated humiliation and denial of medical treatment. Age or infirmity makes little difference. If detained, the parents of Kisha would receive the same treatment as anyone else, Basri said.

Abdulsalam Kisha’s father, a retired engineer. 

Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer

By late afternoon in Omdurman, the police have been reinforced and canisters of tear gas fired in broadsides from trucks clatter off the potholed road. Young men run, choking, crying but waving V for victory signs. They ignore stacks of pebbles at a construction site. The resistance committees insist their protests are non-violent, and so far discipline has held.

Everyone knows the stakes are high, and not just for Sudan. More than a decade after the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab spring, millions across the Middle East are watching what happens in Khartoum, Omdurman and across the country. So, too, are others across Africa, where democracy has been retreating in the face of renewed repression from Zimbabwe to Mali. The future of Sudan is especially important for the chain of unstable states running from Senegal to Somalia.

“This is a contest of totally different and incompatible visions of politics,” said Kholood Khair, founding director of Confluence Advisory, a thinktank in Khartoum.

On one side are the political elites, the rebel groups, the military and paramilitaries with their patronage-based politics, back-room deals and distribution of the country’s resources between those strong enough to claim a share. On the other is the street, and a vision of transformational change based on entirely new ideas about civilian government.

“The military have a lot of patrimonial power and military might. The street has the numbers, new ideas and time … At the moment, we are at an impasse,” said Khair. “For pro-democracy movements, Sudan is a kind of proof of concept that change can come. If they can do it in Sudan, they can do it elsewhere. And there are lots of people excited by that, but lots very worried by it, too.”

Many analysts in Khartoum say that a decisive moment is fast approaching. The country is already plunged in economic crisis, partly a consequence of last October’s coup which led the US, World Bank and other major donors to cut off the flow of billions of dollars of aid.

Millions are already hungry, violence is rising in restive regions such as Darfur and inflation is running at 250%. If people start to go hungry or can no longer afford fuel or find work, the relatively modest protests could rapidly swell into the massive demonstrations that brought down Bashir’s government in 2019.

The most powerful military rulers of Sudan – Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti” – now find themselves in a quandary. To stave off economic collapse and widespread protests, they need international aid. But to get it they need to make concessions and at least bring some of Sudan’s mainstream civilian politicians back into government. The resistance committees would see this as another betrayal, however, and would protest, inevitably prompting the sort of repression that would undermine any compromise. Meanwhile, the economy would deteriorate further.

The Abdulsalam family are not bothered by any of this. They say they will remain true to the ideas and ambitions that attracted their son to the protest movement against Bashir and led to his death three years ago.

“The French Revolution took many years to be successful,” said Kisha’s father, as the rest of the resistance committee ate a rapid lunch before heading out to another protest. “We have only just started ours.”

Abdulsalam Kisha’s mother, also an activist, at home with a picture of her son who was killed in a protest three years ago. 

Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer