It is a civilian version of an extremely lethal military assault rifle designed to take out a large number of victims in record time.

The gruesome toll of the Texas elementary school massacre is closely related to the fact that the killer, Salvador Ramos, was armed with a civilian version. A military assault rifle designed to kill as many victims as possible in record time.

known in the United States as “AR-15”, It is a semi-automatic rifle which has many versions. Its military design is “M16”, which can be lowered into automatic mode.

In Uvalde on Tuesday, Ramos managed to kill 19 students and two teachers, despite the fact that police were on the spot.

But even before that, AR-15s, over the counter, They had already proven their tragic effectiveness In a series of shootings that plunged America into mourning.

“There is no significant difference between[these rifles]and military weapons,” highlights the Violence Policy Center, a specialized think tank.

either during the massacre in July 2012 at a Colorado movie theater (82 victims, 12 dead), Five months after the massacre at an elementary school in Connecticut (26 dead, 20 children) or the December 2015 jihadist attack in San Bernardino, California (36 people affected, 14 dead), these light rifles equipped with large-capacity chargers, up to 30 knots For more.

One shooter, over 500 victims

on October 1, 2017 The sexagenarian who was shot from the 32nd floor of his hotel in Las Vegas, In the middle of a country concert, 58 people were killed and about 500 were injured, many of them with rifles.

the man who killed a month later 25 people in a church in Texas He also had an AR-15 in full religious service.

to like Nicolas Cruz, A young man sows the seeds of death at Parkland High School in Florida on Valentines Day 2018.

in the same state in 2016Over a hundred victims at a gay club in Orlando They fell under the bullets of a single attacker armed with this assault rifle: 49 were killed and many of the 53 survivors were seriously injured, given the projectile’s extreme speed and their ability to destroy tissue. .

“These weapons are used to commit terrible acts. They are called Perfect killing machines. They fire bullets at dangerous speeds that go through the body and cause horrific carnage,” Joe Biden, then Barack Obama’s vice president, said at the time.

In 1994, the US Congress passed a law that Assault rifles and some high-capacity magazines were banned for ten years. The ban ended in 2004 and has not been renewed since then, despite several attempts. The idea of ​​a legislative setback on this issue disappeared.

Actually, the market for these extremely dangerous rifles is booming. Manufacturers present them as hunting, sporting or recreational items, or as the best answer to Americans’ need for self-defense.