This year marks the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

Back then, after the deaths of twenty six- and seven-year-olds and six adults in the east coast state of Connecticut, the American nation came together in its shock for a historic moment.

But the bloody deed and the brief pause did not change America.

As a result, Congress did not even want to decide on a somewhat more thorough screening of gun buyers.

Camp thinking hasn't diminished a bit since then.

And in Texas, the next gunman has now attacked the nearest elementary school.

Shortly after his 18th birthday - three years before he would have been allowed to drink beer - he apparently legally bought two semi-automatic rifles and used them to murder 19 children and two adults on Tuesday.

The NRA makes fearful citizens fearful

Because it wasn't the images of twenty children's coffins, desperate relatives or a tearful Barack Obama in the White House that had become politically effective in 2012, but the defiant reaction of the NRA gun lobby.

Wayne La Pierre, who has been the strongman in America's most powerful lobby group for 31 years now, coined the sentence exactly one week after the killing spree, on which every gun law reform has bounced off to this day: "The only thing that can stop an armed villain is a armed good.”

Half of the American population was disgusted by this forward rush.

The other felt understood and confirmed in her fear.

The American arms industry records record sales, especially in times of crisis: this was the case during the peak phases of the pandemic as well as in the tricky weeks after the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump did not want to admit defeat.

And it's like that after every massacre.

In part, that's because the NRA and company routinely foment a last-minute panic, suspecting the government is finally going to desecrate the constitution and ban guns.

But it's also because every massacre in a school, movie theater, supermarket, church, or music festival reminds millions upon millions of Americans how easily it is possible to be defenseless in the face of a murderer.

Incidentally, the largest growth market for the gun industry is made up of women, who now expect security from their own gun more often than in the past.

"Why are we willing to live with this carnage?" President Joe Biden asked on Tuesday.

After half a century in American politics, nobody knows the answers better than he does.

A bit like our argument about the speed limit

Shooting is a popular pastime in much of the United States.

The group of hunters and marksmen is by no means large enough to explain that there are more guns in circulation in America today than the country has inhabitants.

But they're proud, they're well organized, and they sell their fun as a right to freedom.

Despite all the differences, this part of the debate is reminiscent of the long-running dispute in Germany about the speed limit on the autobahn: supporters can parry appeals to reason with statistics according to which the percentage of all weapons sold that are used to commit crimes or even mass murders is negligible.