It’s the Gun Industry, and its NRA

It’s the Gun Industry, and its NRA

Its not mental health, since we are going to always have mentally challenged individuals, even in the White House.

It is not people not stepping forward, since the police were called several times to the shooter’s house, and he was expelled from school because of problems.  He left pictures with weapons on his social media website. 

While Florida law allows gun and ammunition sales to 18-year-olds, it prohibits sales to the mentally ill, something cancelled nationally by the Trump Administration.  Yet it was still in effect by Florida law, and the police and schools failed to activate this, probably because he was not officially declared mentally ill by a court.

It was not Donald Trump or even the Congress, since the gun industry, through the NRA front, makes sure that every supporter is well funded, and any detractor opposed for reelection, and their opponent well-funded.  They monitor every vote, and keep a record to damn their opponents, or any rare strayer.

It is not the lack of school guards, since they had a safety officer.  How does one expect a retired soldier or policeman to go against a semi-automatic gunman, who may be wearing body armor, and have a bump stock allowing automatic firing, with a well thought out plan of attack? The guard doesn’t wear armor or a helmet, doesn’t have location intelligence or surveillance.  If trained as a policeman, they call for the SWAT team, with 6 armored personnel and an armored vehicle.  If trained as a soldier, they have full armor and an armored hum-V, with 5 other armored soldiers in their squad.

With all the explicit days of TV coverage, they never go to the source of the gun manufacturer and sales stores.  The NRA is just their well-funded and obedient front.  Even NRA members favor complete gun purchase reviews.  What really is needed is for the gun industry to give up its total immovability, even on reasonable measures highly approved by the general public and even by NRA members.  Also stopping ranking aevery lawmaker on every vote, and opposing any who need to stray.  As an example, how many guns are they really going to sell to those declared mentally incompetent?  Do they really need to sell bump stocks and armored vests?  Would it really hurt them to allow computerized records for background checks.  How many people really buy magazines of over 20 rounds. The terrible publicity that they eventually get from mass shootings probably costs them more customers than these safety measures will cost them.

To see how powerful the gun industry is, their 2016 economic impact was $51 billion.  There are 301,000 jobs in the industry.  There were 15.7 million background checks that year.  According to open secrets.org, the NRA gave $1.1 million in contributions to Republicans, almost all from organizations, and $3.2 million in lobbying in 2016.  Locally, they gave only $2,000 to Mimi Walters, Darrel Issa, and $1,000 to Dana Rohrabacher, but $3,500 to Devin Nunes.  Contributions were given to 214 Republicans, for an average of $2,681, and a total of $573,750.  The NRA spent $11.4 million to support Trump, and $19..8 million to oppose Hillary Clinton, totaling more than $31 million.  For perspective, in 2015-16, Mimi Walters raised $2 million, including $1 million from PACS.

Since assault weapons were allowed to be sold in 2004, over 8 million have been sold.  While semi-automatic AR-15s are often used by mass shooters, except for the long range of the Vegas shooter, they could be replaced by semi-automatic pistols.  So banning them again may not be effective.  It doesn’t pay to identify who made which gun in each shooting, since they all make similar guns.

Since states have a drinking age of 21, since that is when youths become more responsible, shouldn’t that be the age of allowing gun purchases?

Let’s go back to who has complete control of the whole gun culture, the gun industry itself.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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