The mass murders in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, were the culmination of decades of lobbying and deceptive marketing perpetrated by the gun industry. Because of their lies, more Americans have died from gun violence — including suicides and accidents — since 1975 than in all of the wars in U.S. history.
The most pervasive lie is that guns are a good means of protection. But compared to people without firearm access, those with access to firearms are about twice as likely to die in homicides, and three times as likely to die by suicide. If guns really provided protection, our nation, which is home to more guns than people, would have lower homicide and suicide rates.
A second lie is the fundamentalist view of the Second Amendment that claims any type of gun regulation to be unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision overturned 70 years of precedent to declare that there is an individual right to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense. But Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion noted that the Second Amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
