Think of them as rapid-fire Mother Teresas
Thank goodness we have the National Rifle Association and the firearms industry to guide us and write our gun laws.
The wise and caring souls who form the gun lobby have told us for years that the more guns we have, the safer we will be. If we listened to them, they reassured us, that the numbers of gun-related deaths were bound to get better.
In the aftermath of a school shooting in Iowa that left a sixth-grader dead, five other students wounded, and the 17-year-old shooter also dead, it’s clear the NRA geniuses were right.
The numbers of gun deaths in America keep going up.
Every year.
Every.
Year
Just 10 years ago, in 2014, there were 33,594 gun-related deaths in the United States. That represented a slight decline from the prior year, when 33, 636 died in incidents involving firearms.
The gun lobby brain trust knew, though, that there was room for growth.
And—once again—they were correct.
By 2022, we had inched reasonably close to 50,000 firearms-related deaths per year in the United States. The actual number was 48,830.
The final numbers for 2023 aren’t in yet, but we passed the 40,000 mark in the autumn.
Any way one slices it, that means we have achieved 50% growth in gun-related deaths in only 10 years.
That’s remarkable.
Now, there are cynical souls out there who say that the gun lobby did not do all this for principled, selfless reasons. It is hard to believe that anyone would be so jaded as to think that the people in the firearms industry have anything other than the purest and most benevolent motives.
The most conservative estimates calculate that the U.S. gun industry has a net worth of $28 billion. Other, more expansive calculations peg the number at more than $50 billion.
Those are such trivial sums that it is hard to believe anyone—even the most amoral and grasping soul—would be motivated solely by greed.
I mean—really—it’s not like there are corruption trials involving the NRA going on in which prosecutors argue that the organization’s top dogs have been bilking members for decades and hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of dollars.
If the leaders of the gun lobby didn’t go around wearing $10,000 suits while they flew from place to place in large private jets, one could easily mistake them for the late Mother Teresa.
No, the efforts of those in and dependent on the firearms industry aren’t driven by avarice or commerce. They’re charitable acts.
As the shooting in Iowa demonstrates, thanks to the NRA, the gun lobby, and lapdog legislators around the country who follow the company line, American children have a much different experience than their counterparts in other parts of the world.
In most industrialized nations, children go to school in blissful ignorance. They sit in their classrooms and think about their lessons, the boy or girl seated next to them, a sport they love to play or the movie they saw the night before.
They don’t worry about having a classmate or a former student show up with a gun and start shooting. They don’t fret that they will have to go to funerals for their schoolmates or have their schoolmates attend their funerals.
The NRA decided such innocence—er, ignorance—was intolerable for American schoolchildren.
Because residents of the United States are 20 times more likely to die in a gun-related incident than citizens in other industrialized nations, students here experience education differently.
They get to go through metal detectors on the way to their classrooms. They walk past armed guards in many places as they stroll through the schoolhouse doors. Many also have the glorious experience of taking part in active shooter drills.
And many of them get to be part of active-shooter experiences.
The gun lobby sees this as an essential part of the educational experience. The NRA and its foot soldiers believe that having students live and learn in varying states of dread only enhances their growth.
The NRA and the gun industry have spent millions and millions of dollars helping to create a nation and a society in which having a 17-year-old shoot and kill a sixth-grader for no apparent reason no longer shocks us.
How can we ever thank the NRA and the gun lobby for all they have done?
FOOTNOTE: Â John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.
Another of Krull’s intelligence insulting garbage emitting diatribes aimed at liberal iphone game players. No mention whatsoever of the liberal courts in Democrat cities, such as Chicago, St Louis, Atlanta, New York City, Seattle, and states, such as Illinois, California, New York, Colorado, Washington, and Minnesota turning violent felons back out on the streets to kill and maim instead of making them life long residents of penal institutions, in the hope they will change their ways and “play nice”.
Perhaps Krull doesn’t understand that criminals break laws, not abide by them. No weapon of any kind ever killed anyone of it’s own accord, as the evil gun manufacturers intentionally make them without minds or souls.
yow man. dem dam libs taking my guns! i got me a tank of moonshine to spray on all them liberals if they git anywheres near my hole
(Either poor, or saddle with uneducated kids. Best friend ever of the gun manufacturing industry, cause they got this guy thinking Victory for Russia is telling the truth. (“Sir. They’re coming to get you. You need 63 more guns. Another $40K on guns and ammo this year, and you’re all set to stop them liberals.”)
Just another example of twisted liberal thinking. Let’s apply this same logic to automobiles and ban them too. Why not cigarettes and alcohol?
Right on cue.
It’s time to make fun of the weak-minded, easily manipulated by the NRA fools out there who part with their hard-earned $$ like the easiest mark in the crowd:
Weak fools have been rushing out to buy guns (“I own over 100 guns now!â€), spending $100,000’s of their kid’s college funds buying guns instead of taking care of their kid’s education….having been told now, for the last 50-years, that:
“The government is coming to take your guns! Take your pickups! Take your ATV’s! Take your light bulbs!†by the manufactuers of overly priced guns.
It’s a great selling tactic for weak-minded fools.
More weak minded hoplophobe logic. The UK tried it your way. Now they are banning knives. 93% of guns used in crimes are obtained illegally. Make more gun laws and 93% of the guns used in crime will obtained illegally.
Perhaps we need a different approach.
The second amendment, not the NRA, who has killed no one, is our guide. The NRA educates people on gun safety and rights.
But since you invoked Mother Teresa, what do you think her thoughts on your pet political pulpit, abortion, would be? Wish you were are more attentive to those numbers which kill far more innocent lives than legal guns.
Good God. See previous RIGHT ON CUE 2:22pm post.
Why not just start mooing like a cow Jerry? You are so easily manipulated!
Actually, you’re on cue and so predictable I could have written your response for you.
How about attempting to make comments which are salient to the topic rather than your ad hominem fallacies?
Let’s see: Less that 2% of the population of Israel had guns. How did that work for them?
Review the history of nations that the government took guns away from civilians. How did that work. With thousands of military aged men walking across our southern border unvetted and disappearing in to major cities and warnings that sleeper cells are forming all over, how will a gun free nation survive then the “attack” command is given?
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