Control vs. Out of Control The NRA solution to gun violence in schools is more guns. They have, over the years, prevented any scientific study of gun violence, but will categorically assert that the reason there are shooting at schools is because they are designated gun-free zones and therefore attractive to anyone with a gun and a grudge or whatever other motivation they may have to go shoot someone. This is a false narrative, of course, as many mass shootings occur in areas with no such designation. The idea that the “good guy with a gun” is an effective disincentive to deranged killers fails to note the “deranged” component of the equation, not to mention also that even trained individuals are shooting themselves and others regularly, as well as losing their guns from their cars, homes, offices, etc., although these things don’t get reported on a national level. How many times have we read of some idiot teaching his dog to retrieve guns who ends up getting shot by Fido? You won’t find it in the New York Times, but in your local paper you may very well. Check your police blotter, if your paper publishes one. Such stories are often treated as humorous exceptions, but they add up and they mean that people with guns are dangerous to themselves and others, regardless of whether they are themselves criminals. It is sensible in a country with millions of guns that those weapons should be regulated, like the militias they were meant, 200 years ago (when there were also a lot more dangerous animals in close proximity to humans, and when feeding your family required some deer to supplement what you could grow yourself), to empower against tyranny. How the NRA became the bastion of murder instead of an amateurs’ society devoted to actually keeping people safe around guns I cannot understand, just as I cannot understand how what is actually such a marginal group can wield such disproportionate political power. Well, that last point I think is probably attributable more to the lack of courage our politicians routinely exhibit than to any actual power the NRA may have, although they do have far too much money for advertising than is good for the country, clearly. Keep writing to and calling your representatives in Congress. We have to fight these bastards. Peacefully.