A comment I wrote in response to a post by Peter Dreier on TruthOut:
Let’s distinguish between independent and dependent variables. The most important dependent variable is the number of gun-caused deaths, and multiple-death slaughters, right? Independent variables?
The NRA/Republican line is that these deaths are caused by evil or psychotic or psychopathic individuals. Implication? If the U.S. has dramatically more of these murders, then citizens of the U.S. must be dramatically more mentally unbalanced than citizens of other nations. Doesn’t hold water, though. We aren’t more unbalanced. The hypothesis is bogus!
So we need to seek an alternative. We need to look for a way the U.S. differs from other nations, a way that might be correlated to frequency of gun violence. Hmmm… Wait! I have a suggestion. What about, say, the laxness of regulations on sales of military-grade weapons, ammunition, and other paraphernalia?
Is it easier to obtain such stuff in the U.S. than in other developed nations? Yes. Do we have more gun-related individual and multiple murders than other developed nations? Yes, dramatically more.
Think about it.