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It is impossible to type out all of the reasons, but here are a few. Check out Bowling for Columbine btw - a movie from two thousand fucking two, 15 years BEFORE that particular one. We've seen that particular bullet coming for a LONG time, and the ones before it, and the ones after it, and the ones yet to come - we KNOW, yet we do NOTHING. Most especially the "Pro-Life" crowd.
Lobbying. It's a thing. The NRS especially is one of the more powerful ones. More than 80% of American citizens - rising to >90% of NRA members even!!! - want some form of extremely limited gun control. However, we do not live in a democracy, not even one dominated by conservatives or rural Americans - rather, we live in a plutocracy where despite the OVERWHELMING support of the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, we cannot manage to get anything done.
Also, much of that money supposedly flowing to politicians from the "NRA" actually has been found to have ties back to Russia. Many of the politicians receiving that money may not even know the true source of where it came from - nor do they particularly seem to care.
Oh, and then billionaires bought up pretty much all of the major news outlets (a handful of others still exist - did The Guardian escape that? Well, even if they were, they seem to be allowed to talk about other corporate take-overs (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/may/03/billionaires-extra-power-media-ownership-elon-musk).
And hopefully you already know what happened to Google, where SEOs took over the searches so that it is nearly impossible to find things that just five years ago were easily retrievable, with the only lingering hold-out being Reddit, before then that whole thing happened...
BTW, the government is literally not allowed to collect statistics on how many violent gun deaths occur in America. I am not sure if this is the video where Jordan Klepper showcases that, but if not then he has a bunch of others. Or take your pick - there are millions if not billions of videos, of varying degree of quality and relevance. I've never seen one show a truly "unbalanced" take though - that is just not how for-profit corporations work. You just have to educate yourself by watching a bunch of stuff until you know how trustworthy the source is, and also each and every material topic too. It is sad, but we cannot seem to trust any (especially for-profit) advice these days. Though if you want another recommendation, there's John Oliver's whole expose on the NRA. To provide a modicum of balance, on the other side there are series such as Paul Harrell's Mass Shootings: Causes and Possible Solutions.
And - yes there is always more - there are other arguments such as: "if someone cannot get a gun they will simply make their own bomb" (ignores how much harder it is to do that), and the whole thing of plastic ghost guns (again ignores how difficult it would be to do that). Ultimately, i think that children being sacrificed is itself merely a symptom of a much deeper cause. People on Lemmy call it "capitalism", which has a LOT of truth to it - but then again, nations such as communist China have their own different issues. But, again, since ~90% of Americans already are in favor of stopping these kinds of mass-shootings, this will not be solved by merely educating yourself or "getting the word out". In fact, this type of issue is precisely the type of thing that Trump leaned heavily on as his route to the White House - "Hillary Clinton is corrupt so you should elect me and I will get rid of all the corruption, everywhere". So realistically, this is just something that we are going to simply have to live with, unless and until people fucking DO something about it. e.g. a responsible gun owner could patrol their own neighborhood schools. However, do note that every time someone does try to do that, they end up shooting innocent people instead, and yet it does nothing to stop the actual shooters, who can pull guns out of a bag (long-ish violin or trumpet case maybe?) and start shooting in mere seconds - not enough time to notice and prevent it. So start by educating yourself, since that's really all you can do, and also it will help enormously to ensure that you are on the correct side of the issue.
For those so inclined, there is a verse commanding the latter point even in the actual Holy Bible, at 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true". I don't know what can be done, after the education stage, but I know it MUST begin with that.
The thing that stuck with me about Bowling for Columbine is that the school was in the same zip code as a DoJ establishment manufacturing rocket technology for war, in the most violent country in modern history. Drawing that connection between the violence done by the State and the violence done by citizens was very eye opening for me. The problem isn't just the guns, or the NRA, or lobbying - the problem is that the United States is an evil country and we are all complicit in its evil. This is normal. 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction.' What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?
Normalisation of violence most likely had an effect, but I don't think that the connection is as simple as
Edit: I was reminded that the world in the 90s, in this case 25 years ago, was quite different and likely less connected. So probably the point about geographic proximity to centers of violence production played a larger part than I thought
From an interview Michael Moore gave to DemocracyNow he explains the connection pretty well, I think. America is a violent country and it makes violent people.
the Columbine shootings occurred on the same day as the heaviest United States bombing of the Kosovo war,
the number one private employer in Littleton is Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons maker
Rocky Flats, the largest plutonium-making place in the world, is just down the road
NORAD is just up the road.
But you don't think children with a childhood steeped in violence and families steeped in violence are going to grow up thinking about this? All of this militarization and violence are a cultural miasma and children absorb the lessons taught to them by America.
Kill your enemies, make them fear you, rule the world, Be a Man!
No, quite the opposite. But what I think is that when a country rallies violence and presents it as something normal, all of the citizens, children included, will be affected. Maybe the fact that those violence factories are near had influence, but I would guess that this influence only added a bit to what everyone got already.
Except maybe if the workers viewed working for military as a cornerstone for their self-identity, maybe that would become a greater factor.
Well remember, this was the 90s. Today we're all disembodied digital nomads so it doesn't matter what is near or far, but back then there was still a sense of place that meant having a bunch of military-industrial institutions nearby would effect the local culture.
And maybe that's why shootings get worse every year. The physical location doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah, that's probably true, now 90s seem like a different reality altogether