The NRA Has Won. Mass Shootings Are a Part of American Life

The tragedy elicited a powerful, frustrated reaction from President Obama, who lamented, “our thoughts and prayers are not enough“.

I don’t want to hear any more of their gun-loving slogans.

In fact, since the Columbine shooting spree in 1999, Congress has passed only a single new major gun measure – a law improving national background checks, which followed 2007’s Virginia Tech shooting.

According to The Brady Center, “Over 18,000 American children and teens are injured or killed each year due to gun violence”. So why is it so hard to get anything done?

This week we have seen yet another disturbing incident of promising lives brought to a sudden end by gun violence – in keeping with our pattern of one school shooting per week. But guns are involved in these school shootings just as automobiles are when a drunk driver mows down a sidewalk full of people.

But on April 17, 2013, a day President Barack Obama described as “shameful”, the Senate blocked the background check reforms thanks to a coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats, and fuelled by the gun lobby and its chief proponent, the National Rifle Association.

Nine out of 10 Americans agree that we should have universal background checks, including three out of four NRA members. Because opponents of gun control like the NRA sure have politicized the issue.

The truth is that the NRA doesn’t have a straight face.

We’re still waiting for conclusive studies on the effectiveness of such restrictions, Swanson said.

More than one in five US teenagers (ages 14 to 17) report having witnessed a shooting.

Lucas was a House sponsor of both bills, and is perhaps the legislature’s most vocal advocate for gun rights. What they’re saying, and not so indirectly, is that these deaths are the unfortunate cost of doing business for an America that must defend itself, that their guns have an important role in keeping citizens safe. If gun ownership mirrors political parties, then hardline extremists are not at all the majority; they’re on the fringes.

So why doesn’t it ever get that far? “And they feel like they were sent to Washington to do that”.

There are those who call for change, but such calls are always met with resistance from people who can not tolerate any change in our gun laws.

So how can the tide be turned?

Warren said, “What I can honestly say is we have to keep fighting back”.

“My guess is, I’m prepared to bet you that it was a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon, I don’t know that yet”, he said. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society be able to identify these people ahead of time.

In addition to Everytown, Spitzer pointed to the organization co-founded by former Congresswoman and gun violence victim Gabby Giffords, “Americans For Responsible Solutions,” as an example of groups that have begun to match the NRA’s muscle. Put simply, people with guns seem to kill people at higher rates than people armed with less efficient killing machines.