'The United States had lost its mind': What the Parkland shooting looked like in a country emerging from civil war

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March 15, 2018 9:46 PM

Colombians 'really do think that we are a danger to ourselves and others right now.'

The response to the shooting at Marjory Stonemen Douglas High School in the US has been strong and lasting.
Overseas, the deadly incident has prompted more concern about life in the US.
In Colombia, which is struggling to emerge from a half-century of civil conflict, the scale of violence in the US is alarming.

Since 1990, there have been 22 shootings at US elementary or secondary schools in which two or more people were killed, in addition to several deadly shootings at American universities over that period.

Violent incidents at US schools often pass with little notice, but the recent shooting at Marjory Stonemen Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed, has prompted a sustained response — including National Walkout Day, during which students around the US and the world called for a response to gun violence.

The Parkland shooting also drew attention overseas, where news of deadly violence in American schools has long been greeted with surprise and dismay.

A relatively even keel

Villegas highlighted the capital, Bogota, where local officials said the 2017 homicide rate was about 14 per 100,000 people, the lowest since 1979 — around the time Pablo Escobar got started in international drug trafficking. (Medellin, Escobar's home turf, saw a slight increase in deadly violence, with 33 more homicide cases in 2017 than in 2016 — over half attributed to clashes between criminal groups.)

More than 300 of the country's municipalities had passed 2017 with no homicides, Villegas added. Many of them were in Norte de Santander and the neighboring department of Santander — in the latter department, 51 of 78 municipalities reportedly went without homicides last year.

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