The Magazine – June 6, 2022

Eric Drooker’s “Uvalde, May 24, 2022” – Gun violence and the American way of life.

By Françoise Mouly, Art by Eric Drooker

• On May 24th, an eighteen-year-old gunman shot and killed nineteen children and two adults at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas. The horrific spree came just ten days after thirteen people were shot—ten of them killed—at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, by a self-professed white supremacist. In the past two months, Americans have also been confronted with mass shootings at a church, a flea market, and inside a subway car during the morning rush-hour. The magazine’s cover for the June 6, 2022, issue, is by the artist Eric Drooker, who echoes the weary rage of many when he says, “I hastily scrawled this image, wondering, Why are Americans so infatuated with guns in the first place? What are they so afraid of?”