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They say that two topics to avoid in conversation are politics and religion.
Although I, for one, do not believe that the issue of some modicum of gun control should be a political issue, it obviously is.
Even though I have dozens of stories in mind about my two primary writing topics, personal finance and the benefits of walking, I just cannot go about my “regular life” today without addressing our nation’s failure at curtailing madmen from strolling into grocery stores, schools, and other gathering places and mowing people down with military-grade weapons.
Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths. Studies have found this to be true at the state and national levels. According to the New York Times, it is true for homicides, suicides, mass shootings, and even police shootings.
It is an intuitive idea: If guns are more available, people will use them more often. If you replaced “guns” in that sentence with another noun, it would be so obvious as to be banal.
I am even upset with myself that when I turn on the radio or scroll through my news feed and hear or read about another mass shooting, I sort of shrug and say to myself, “Well, that's just the way things are.”
I lean toward the Democratic party and despise Trump so much that I made my first political donation ever…
