A MASS SHOOTING AT A WALMART STORE IN EL PASO, Texas, in the United States, on Saturday claimed 20 lives and left another 27 injured. Gong Honglie, an associate professor of anti-terrorism studies at Nanjing University, comments:

Within 24 hours of the El Paso shooting, there was another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, which killed at least nine people and injured at least 16. While loose gun control policies in the US should be blamed for both tragedies, the El Paso case has shown a new trend in the terrorism that is causing headaches for the US.

According to the official news release, the suspect Patrick Crusius is a 21-year-old white male, and he is believed to have previously expressed support for the Christchurch mosque shooting that killed 51 people in a statement on an online forum. In the same statement, the suspect also justified violence against Hispanic immigrants with white supremacy theories.

El Paso is a city with large numbers of Hispanic residents and at least seven of the victims are US citizens of Mexican ethnic origin.

The case is to a very large extent similar to the Christchurch mosque shooting, which happened in New Zealand this March. Both have much to do with the radical anti-immigrant mentality that's gaining popularity in the US, Australia, and New Zealand, which highlights the necessity of curbing that mentality.

Besides, the El Paso case shows the terrorism threat US faces is no longer planned by radical Islamic extremists only. Homegrown terrorism, based on white supremacy theories, is also rising.

Some defend the former by saying Islamic terrorists are fighting to resist an unfair world order, while some defend the latter by saying that it is a revenge for the rampant terrorist attacks organized by the former. However, it should be noted that both are devils that must be put back into the cage and both have violated the bottom line of the modern world, namely not using violence against civilians.

On the one hand, an unfair world order is no excuse for shooting at civilians. On the other hand, any attempt to take revenge using violent means is against the law and modern values.

The El Paso shooting shows that the US has to face the double burden of fighting both evils and to neglect either would be fatal. Before the conflict between native residents and new immigrants is totally solved, maybe it needs to learn from other countries and implement a strict gun control policy first, so that those with their hearts full of hate will be prevented from so easily getting their hands on weapons.