Gun Laws and White Men

Hardly a day goes by when we hear about a shooting somewhere in the United States.  Today it was a busy street in Washington DC of all places, where two men were shot in an apparent drive-by.  The situation is only getting worse, particularly when one considers that women who shoot their abusive partners are more likely to end up in jail than men.  Especially if they happen to be Black.

Below are snippets from a Twitter thread by activist Shannon Watts.

"Gun laws only protect white men, part eleventeen million: An 80-year-old Nebraska woman who was tortured and isolated by her abusive husband has been sentenced to eight to ten years in prison for shooting and killing him."

"When Marissa Alexander, a Black woman, was prosecuted in Florida for aggravated assault for firing a warning shot into the ceiling to stop her abusive husband, the NRA was silent."

"The NRA pushes laws that arm domestic abusers (to sell more guns) and then they advocate for victims to protect themselves (to sell more guns), but at the end of the day only white men get away with using those guns for self-defense."

"Staff and vendors at a Forth Worth gun show were supposed to check that guns weren't loaded, but a police report said that didn't happen before a woman was shot."

"The NRA also never weighed in on the case of Bresha Meadows, a Black girl jailed at 14 after she shot her abusive father. She was incarcerated for nearly a year before activists demanded prosecutors keep her case in juvenile court."

"The medical director of the emergency department at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center said that so far this year, the hospital had seen a 40 percent increase in the number of gunshot victims coming into the ER compared with 2020."

The picture is stark. The NRA holds so much political clout in the U.S. that the country has effectively become a free-for-all firearm bazaar.  Many people I know have stated that this is one of the main reasons that they will never visit the U.S. again.

I'm losing hope that anything will change.