Americans kicked off 2025 in the same way we spend so many of our days: awash in extreme violence. There was, most shockingly, the terrorist attack in New Orleans on 1 January, in which a former US serviceman drove a car into crowded Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring dozens, as well as a solider who blew up a Tesla cybertruck outside of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Less-covered events from New Year’s Day include the mass shooting in New York that left ten injured; the three killed in a robbery in Mississippi; and the seven shot, two fatally, in an Illinois town.
The US is one of the world’s most violent countries that is not engaged in direct warfare. We are far, far more violent than our economic peer nations. Guns are a clear driver of American carnage. Nearly every nation has mentally ill people, short-fused young men, religious extremists and dangerous people, but compared with other prosperous places that don’t have conflicts raging within their own borders, only America regularly experiences this kind of homicidal violence. That is in large part because what might be mere disputes in other nations can quickly spiral into mass murder when much of the population is armed.
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