Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. According to reports, at least 10 people were killed after a mass shooting at the store with the shooter in police custody. Photo: AFP

Ten people were reportedly killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo in New York State on Saturday by an 18-year-old suspect who was also livestreaming the bloody killing. Thirteen were shot in the attack, with 11 being black and two white. The shooting has been defined as a racially motivated hate crime. 

US President Joe Biden said in a statement, "Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America." New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the gunman a "white supremacist who has engaged in an act of terrorism."

From the 2017 Las Vegas shooting in which a 64-year-old white man from Mesquite, Nevada opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada to the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings in which the gunman killed eight people, six of whom were Asian woman, white terrorism has been prevailing on the US soil. The US had been engaged in overseas anti-terrorism for 20 years, but now the country has become the source of white terrorism. The loss of American life in places which witnessed gun violence by the white is symptomatic of the effects of white nationalist terrorism. Gun violence-featured white terrorism has always been accompanied by deeply embedded racial woes, which highlight the complexities of the issue. 

Xu Liang, an associate professor at the School of International Relations at Beijing International Studies University, told the Global Times that the demonstrations held by people of color against white people reflect their dissatisfaction with the income gap and the unfair social and economic status, while gun violence of whites against other races is a negative response to it. The two sentiments have become entangled and formed a vicious circle. 

Nonetheless, no matter gun control or racial issues, the US government has adopted a lukewarm attitude instead of striving to address either of them. For the US government, the thing that prompts a gunman to pull the trigger is racial hate, rather than the gun itself. A government that wants the benefits from both arms dealers and voters' ballots will only end up talking big while acting little.

The US society has become the victim of gun ownership, but it has gotten used to the stockpile of guns. Many interest groups such as the National Rifle Association are beneficiaries of it, and staying on the right side of the powerful pro-gun organization is often considered necessary for electoral success in both Republican and Democratic campaigns. Under the existing electoral system, many US politicians have become the puppets of those interest groups. 

Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, told the Global Times that the paradox of the US political system is that a government that truly puts the safety and lives of the people above anything else may be forced to step down for doing so. 

In other words, the US lacks the motivation for gun control. What is worse, the Americans have become accustomed to the shootings - statistics show that more than one mass shooting per day occurred in 2021. It is worth noting that many victims of gun violence were people of the lower class and the shootings took place in crowed places like supermarkets and schools, with some intentionally targeting minor races. If the shootings had taken place where politicians and the wealthy gather, perhaps the guns would have been put under control.

If the racial issue is the cancer of the US society, gun violence helps it spread faster. 

The relations between white people and other races are falling into a predicament, like Sisyphus in the Greek myth rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, only to have the rock roll back to the bottom. Under the current US political system, this predicament is unresolvable.