Politics and profits: Where does human life fit in US gun policy

On July 4th, a parade was going on in Highland Park, Chicago. Families were waving flags, kids were running around, and a band was playing festive music: the suburban city was celebrating the 246th birthday of an independent United States and the crowds were soaked in joy. Suddenly, the cheerful air was disrupted by loud rounds of bangs. Some mistook them as sounds of a firework show. The next moment, people were screaming and fleeing in fear and despair. On the country's big day, a mass shooting took 7 innocent lives and left dozens wounded. What would have been a joyous occasion ended up becoming a painful memory of bullets and blood.

Chicago is not the only victim. According to the Gun Violence Archive, over the Independence Day Weekend, more than 500 cases of shootings were reported across the country, except for "only five states where one or more shootings were not reported in that time frame." It is awfully shocking that in only four days, at least 220 people were killed and 570 others wounded by gunshots in the US.

These numbers are quite ironic, considering that ten days ago, on June 25th, President Biden just signed into law the first major gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. People held high expectations for the law. President Biden declared ambitiously, "God willing, it's going to save a lot of lives" and "we are doing something consequential". Unfortunately, the horrible July 4th Weekend gave the law a quick slap in the face.

What has made gun control such an intractable issue is that it has gone far beyond the long-standing debate about the Second Amendment, and has been hijacked by business profits and party politics.

Huge profits from the gun market make gun rights groups strong lobbyists. According to The Hill, "the gun industry has rapidly ballooned in the past 14 years". The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has reported that gun industry has generated a profit of more than $70.5 billion in 2021, compared to $19.1 billion 14 years ago.

An analysis by OpenSecrets, a research center, reveals that in each year from 1998, gun rights groups spent staggeringly more on lobbying than gun control groups. In 2021, gun rights groups spent a record-breaking $15.8 million, five times more than the $2.9 million by gun control groups. And according to BBC, the National Rifle Association (NRA) alone spent about $3 million per year to influence gun policy. As Shannon Watts, a gun violence prevention activist, aptly tweeted, "Gun violence is a political problem."

Over the years, gun control has become one of the most politically charged issues in the US. In essence, it is more about political struggle than human life itself. Just two days before President Biden signed the gun control legislation into law, the US Supreme Court overturned New York's gun law that restricted the carrying of concealed firearms with a 6-3 majority. This, to a large extent, compromised President Biden's effort to control guns. In the Supreme Court where conservative justices enjoy a 6-3 upper hand over liberal justices, any ambitious gun control legislation is under threat.

But tragedy doesn't wait. Before people could recover from the Independence Day shock, only a week later on July 11th, two more people were shot dead and three injured in Southern California, where the perpetrator robbed two 7-Eleven stores in two hours.

Apparently, NRA's slogan that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" has not brought safety and peace to the country, but plunged US citizens in a paradoxical deadlock: no guns, no safety; more guns, more tragedies.

From Buffalo and Uvalde to Chicago and Southern California, people feared and raged. While time may heal scars and allay wrath, barely anything substantive has changed. Time and again, bullets and blood ruin the lives of ordinary Americans, and the question raised by the New York Times remains to be answered: How much value does the US place in human life?

The author is a commentator on international affairs.

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