Given these last weeks, who doesn’t know what an AR-15 is? Who
hasn’t seen the mind-boggling stats on the way assault rifles have flooded this country, or tabulations of accumulating
Newtown-style mass killings, or noted that there are barely more gas
stations nationwide than federally licensed firearms dealers, or heard
the renewed debates over the Second Amendment, or been struck by the rapid shifts in public opinion on gun control, or checked out the disputes over how effective an assault-rifle ban was the last time around? Who doesn’t know about the NRA’s suggestion to weaponize schools, or about the price poor
neighborhoods may be paying in gun deaths for the present expansive
interpretation of the Second Amendment? Who hasn’t seen the legions of
stories about how, in the wake of the Newtown slaughter, sales of guns, especially AR-15 assault rifles, have soared, ammunition sales have surged, background checks for future gun purchases have risen sharply, and gun shows have been besieged with customers?
If you haven’t stumbled across figures on gun violence in America or on suicide-by-gun, you’ve been hiding under a rock. If you haven’t heard about Chicago’s soaring and Washington D.C.'s plunging gun-death stats (and that both towns have relatively strict gun laws), where have you been?
Has
there, in fact, been any aspect of the weaponization of the United
States that, since the Newtown massacre, hasn’t been discussed? Are
you the only person in the country, for instance, who doesn’t know that
Vice President Joe Biden has been assigned the task of coming
up with an administration gun-control agenda before Barack Obama is
inaugurated for his second term? And can you honestly tell me that you
haven’t seen global comparisons of killing rates in countries that have tight gun laws and the U.S., or read at least one discussion about life in countries like Colombia or Guatemala, where armed guards are omnipresent?
Read more: The Pentagon: A Global NRA | The Nation
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