国际英语资讯:Yearender: Americans facing mass shooting milestone in 2019 with no progress in gun control_时事

国际英语资讯:Yearender: Americans facing mass shooting milestone in 2019 with no progress in gun control

The note -- full of anti-Semitic language and lauding white supremacy -- named the Christchurch killer and the man accused of fatally shooting 11 people inside a Pittsburgh synagogue in October of 2018 as inspirations for the attack.

Describing the local people's reaction towards the El Paso shooting, William G. Weaver, political science department co-founder and director at the University of Texas at El Paso, said people were "dismayed, sad, somber, and in disbelief" that the massacre happened in the remote and safe city.

"The idea that a person would travel 600 miles (960 km) to kill El Pasoans is what put the city in shock. The idea that a person would carry hatred such a distance to slaughter people in a city because it is overwhelmingly Mexican-American is incomprehensible to the citizens in our isolated and insular city," he continued.

Scholars argue that such hate crime is not a new phenomenon in the U.S. history. However, they noted that there is a growing number of mass shootings that involve hate and hate bias in recent years.

Jon R. Taylor, political science professor and department chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio, believed the social and political reasons for hate crimes vary, "from far-right political and racialist extremism to religious extremism and bias to ethnic prejudice to anti-LGBTQ bias."

His view was echoed by Peter J. Li, associate professor of East Asian politics at University of Houston-Downtown. According to Li, the number of hate crime has increased since 2016 general election.