If we all made a noise, could we drown out the sound of gunfire?
There were two mass shootings in Florida, one in Virginia Beach and 32 dead in Chicago over the Memorial day weekend. Ft Worth, Arlington and Houston, Texas missed the count to qualify as a MASS shooting by one each to. All in three days and that doesn't count the mundane everyday misery of gun violence all across the country from small town to major metropolis. Mundane everyday misery and gun violence should never appear in one sentence yet it does every damn day.
Ask any gunner how this can be and they deflect to mental health, poverty, over crowding, video games, drugs, gangs and unicorns. Everything but GUNS.
Is that true? I personally don't think so. It's guns.
In the United States of America there are (+/-) 15,000 McDonald's, 6,000 Starbucks and 36,000 pizza chain restaurants.
There are also, in the United States of America, 80,000 licensed gun dealers according to the BATF&E (ATF).
That's LICENSED dealers, not the folks selling guns out of their car trunks or over the internet which is an additional 40% over and above the 'official' gun sellers.
It really is the GUNS.
Who is supposed to oversee the operation of all these gun sellers? The ATF which hasn't had a budget increase or staffing increase in a decade or a confirmed director in six years.
Even at that there were 2000 dealers cited by ATF agents over two years, many multiple times. Almost none of them lost their Federal Firearms License. Seems the watchdog is owned by the fox and us chickens are on our own.
No one thing will stem the bloodshed but fixing the enforcement system which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the gun industry would be a good start.
President Biden has a nominee to head the ATF, David Chapman, who is pending approval by the Senate. Gunners hate him.
Perhaps if we all made a noise we could drown out the sound of gunfire.
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