When I say “the NRA” I mean every member, and also every politician who has accepted money from the National Rifle Association to fund their campaigns.
An issue that is closely related to gun violence in the USA is the problem of politicians legally receiving multi-million dollar bribes (sometimes called “campaign contributions”) and legislating in accordance with the wishes of the lobbyists instead of the majority of the American people.
Whenever any American politician opposes passing sensible gun regulations, their stated reasons for doing so are not their real reason. They won’t publicly say “I oppose this bill because the NRA paid me 44 million dollars to oppose it”. Instead, they’ll pretend that their stand is based on principle or patriotism and they’ll parrot NRA talking points which they probably know to be untrue.
I’ve heard all of the arguments against passing sensible gun laws and every one of them is simple enough and brief enough to fit on bumper stickers. I’m aware of the facts, none of the simplistic pro-gun slogans stand up to scrutiny.
Nothing will be done to reduce the amount of gun violence in the United States until a lot more NRA-funded politicians are voted out of office. In the meantime, we can expect mass shootings to continue to occur regularly, and NRA-funded politicians to continue responding with empty statements of “thoughts and prayers”.