■ Worldwide, about 1,100 are shot to death daily. In the U.S., it’s about 45-47 people daily, just shy of being a quarter of the total. We kill almost a quarter of the world’s gun-dead here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Why Republicans Won’t Budge on Guns

The calculation behind Republicans’ steadfast opposition to any new gun regulations — even in the face of the kind of unthinkable massacre that occurred Tuesday at an elementary school in Texas and polls that show the overwhelming majority of Americans (up to 90 percent) support some restrictions on firearms — is a fairly simple one for Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Carl Hulse reports.

            Asked Wednesday what the reaction would be from voters back home if he were to support any significant form of gun control, the first-term Republican had a straightforward answer: “Most would probably throw me out of office,” he said.

            The reality is that that 90 percent figure probably includes some Republicans who are open to new laws, but would not clamor for them or punish a lawmaker for failing to back them, and the 10 percent opposed reflect the sentiments of the G.O.P. base, which decides primary contests and is zealous in its devotion to gun rights.

            Most Republicans in the Senate represent deeply conservative states where gun ownership is treated as a sacred privilege enshrined in the Constitution, a privilege not to be infringed upon no matter how much blood is spilled in classrooms and school hallways around the country.

            But as Republican voters have become more conservative, Republican lawmakers have dug in deeply against any notion that new strictures on gun purchases are an antidote to mass shootings. They say that such restrictions are unconstitutional, even though adult Americans would continue to have easy access to weapons purchases if they became law.

            Republicans like Cramer understand that they would receive little political reward for joining the push for laws to limit access to guns, including assault-style weapons. But they know for certain that they would be pounded — and most likely left facing a primary opponent who could cost them their job — for voting for gun safety laws or even voicing support for them.

■ The scene on Wednesday on Capitol Hill had a wrenching familiarity to it, as Republican lawmakers were mobbed by reporters and pressed on whether they could support something — anything — to curb the ongoing gun violence in the United States. Most who engaged said they were open to discussions, that they were happy to review what was on the table and that maybe, just maybe, some accommodation could be reached.

            That, of course, is Republicon bullshit. They say they’re open to discussion because they must say something in order to dodge the reporters. They don’t dare say what they will actually do—which is to oppose any additional restraint in gun laws.

            And so for the sake of the political careers of a couple half dozen no-backbone politicians, we’ll all endure more carnage in churches and classrooms and wherever people gather in numbers sufficient to make an easy target for a disgruntled mass murderer.

Texas Gun Laws

By Madeleine Carlisle, Time magazine; lightly edited

Six mass shootings have occurred in Texas since 2016, and the gun control advocacy group Giffords: Courage To Fight Gun Violence rates Texas as having some of the weakest gun laws in the country, giving the laws an F grade on its Annual Gun Law Scorecard for 2021.

            “Year after year, tragedy after tragedy, lawmakers in Texas not only refuse to pass life-saving gun safety laws — they actively choose to strip us of our basic public safety measures,” Shannon Watts, founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action, said in a statement to Time.

            In 2016, the state legalized open carry of handguns and required public colleges and universities to allow handgun license holders to carry their weapons on campus.

            Last June, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed seven laws loosening gun restrictions even further, including a law allowing people over the age of 21 to legally carry a handgun without a license or training. Texas does not require universal background checks on all gun sales, and does not have a law restricting assault weapons.

            “If anything, Texas has gone the opposite of many places, in spite of the fact that several gun related massacres have occurred in the state during that time period,” says Mark P. Jones, a fellow in political science at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. ...

YET POLLING INDICATES most Texas voters aren’t as far to the right on gun policy as their laws would suggest. University of Texas/Texas Tribune polls going back to late 2015 have found that pluralities or majorities of Texas voters have supported making gun control laws in Texas more strict, says Joshua M. Blank, the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Yet during that time, the state’s politicians have loosened the laws instead.

            “There’s a disconnect,” says Blank. “[Like] other states in America, it’s not the majority of voters who are driving this discussion and the policies being produced in Texas.”

            Rather, it is the power Second Amendment issues have to rally the GOP base, particularly the nearly two million GOP voters who show up to vote in Texas primaries, Jones argues. “The key to power in Texas remains the Republican primary, not the general election,” he says. “And in the Republican primary, holding positions on Second Amendment rights and gun control that are well to the right of the average Texas voter is a winning strategy.”

■ The NRA still held its annual convention in Houston on Friday, three days after the massacre in Uvalde.

TOO MANY GUNS

From Gun News Daily.com

You might be surprised to learn that according to Small Arms Survey, there are more guns in the United States than there are people. ... There are over 393 million firearms in the United States, and this number only includes civilian-owned firearms, meaning it doesn’t count firearms in possession by the military, government agencies, or by law enforcement.

            That number means that there are enough guns for every single person in the United States (including men, women and children) to own one, with 67 million guns left over.  That number is incredibly high, especially when you consider that only four in ten adults say they live in a home with a gun.

            And gun sales are increasing at an astonishing rate.

■ A study done in 2017 by Pew Research Center found that 57% of adults live in a home with no guns, 30% of adults live in homes where they own a gun and 11% of adults don’t currently own a gun, but live with someone who does. The Small Arms Survey also finds that United States has the most civilian owned firearms than any other country in the world at 120.5 per 100 people, with Yemen, a country that has been in a bloody civil war for several years, coming in a far second at 52.8 guns per 100 people.

PREZ ANGRY

Hours after the mass shooting in Texas, President Biden urged Congress to end the “carnage” of gun violence, pleading with lawmakers to “stand up to the gun lobby” and pass “commonsense” gun laws.

            “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?” he asked in a Tuesday address to the nation.

            “Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” he said. “Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone?”

■ Ed Stein , editoonist retired from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver because the Rocky shut down, said:

I was going to post a bunch of my old anti-gun cartoons today. As expected, the nation’s editorial cartoonists created the usual hard-hitting drawings deploring gun violence and the failure of politicians to act. And my work and theirs just seems uselessly flat and repetitive in the face of the horrors we keep enduring. As usual, Democrats call for gun control and Republicans insist on more guns, and nothing changes.

            We are awash in guns, with millions more sold each month. There are now more guns in circulation than people in this country, and the facts are undeniable: more guns equals more gun deaths, and every loosening of gun laws brings more senseless massacres. Study after study shows a direct correlation between guns in circulation and gun deaths. As a nation we are the extreme outlier, drowning in guns and blood, yet the Republican party, still in the grip of the gun lobby despite the rising tide of bloodshed, refuses to admit the truth.

            There’s only one solution. Vote the bastards out.

            If the enormity of the gun violence is not enough to change the political trajectory of this country, we are doomed. Hard-hitting cartoons and editorials are as useless as thoughts and prayers if we can’t elect leaders with the courage and the will to end the mayhem once and for all.

SO I DREW ONE ANYWAY

I don’t think my editoon is going to change the world— but why not? If I don’t think that’s possible, why draw an editorial cartoon? So here goes. I decided to go after the National Rifle Association, the massive lobby that prevents adoption of more restrictive gun laws by threatening the re-election hopes of every politician. If we can change public perception of the NRA, turn it into a salivating demonic monster that everyone will hate, then we’ll disarm the lobbyist and pave the way to more restrictive gun laws.

            Near here are the pencil sketches of my progress towards that cartoon.

            The first attempt has an appropriately ogre-ish NRA monster. I was going to show saliva dripping inside its cavernous maw, but before I went any further, I realized that I needed to show the monster with a gun, a rifle or one of those AR-15-style weapons. (Whatever those are. And how do I picture it? Research needed.)

            On my way to re-doing the drawing by adding a rifle in the monster’s hands, I got side-tracked on the monster’s face. I thought I could put the NRA brand on the monster’s forehead instead of having it form the lower part of his body (as in the first sketch). And as I was doing that (the uppermost of the two sketches pictured hereabouts), I decided I could make the NRA letters form some aspect of the monster’s face. In the second sketch, you can see the ‘N’ becoming one eyebrow of a frown and the ‘R’ lengthening its “leg” to become his nose.

            Once I’d decided to make the leg of the ‘R’ into his nose, he was looking the wrong way for the R to function that way; so I turned the monster and had him looking to the right.

            My next sketch (at the top of the third page) shows the N-eyebrow and R-nose getting a little more pronounced. And the ‘A’ forms the other eye. Now the guy has a rifle in his hand.

            Finally, my last sketch refines the NRA face, puts a gun in the monster’s hands, and brings back the little kid to be threatened on his way to school (hence the book under his arm).

            I never got around to inking the sketch. But if I were working at a newspaper, I would ink it and hope the NRA lobby hadn’t reached my editor.