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Mass shootings, like the two that occurred just 10 days apart in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, are becoming more frequent – and traumatic. And yet efforts to restrict access to guns and control gun violence somehow seem to go nowhere.
The National Rifle Association can take much of the credit for this political paralysis, political scientist Robert Spitzer explains while tracing the NRA’s long history. The group formed shortly after the Civil War, with an emphasis on marksmanship. For much of its existence, the group was more open to basic limits on gun ownership than it is today.
In the 1930s, for example, the NRA supported a waiting period for gun purchases. It was only in the 1970s that the NRA became “ever more political and strident in its defense of so-called ‘gun rights,’ which it increasingly defined as nearly absolute under the Second Amendment,” Spitzer writes.
Also today:
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Emily Schwartz Greco
Philanthropy + Nonprofits Editor
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NRA conventiongoers, like these at the gun group’s 2018 big meeting, browse firearms exhibits.
Loren Elliott/AFP via Getty Images
Robert Spitzer, State University of New York College at Cortland
The group, founded in 1871, didn’t try to smother virtually all gun control efforts until the mid-1970s.
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Health + Medicine
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Debbie-Ann Shirley, University of Virginia
The COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe illness leading to hospitalization and death in all age groups, including children ages 5 to 11.
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Politics + Society
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Christopher Poliquin, University of California, Los Angeles
After mass shootings, politicians in Washington have failed to pass new gun control legislation, despite public pressure. But laws are being passed at the state level, largely to loosen restrictions.
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Lara Salahi, Endicott College; Christina Smith, Georgia College and State University
Partnerships between universities and local media outlets are key ways to sustain local news where coverage is diminishing.
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Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland
There is a mental and psychological dimension to what leads people to commit mass killings. But it is not mental illness or pathology.
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Arts + Culture
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Roger J. Kreuz, University of Memphis
Many of the coinages fail to differentiate the mundane from the momentous. Has the suffix’s overuse rendered it essentially meaningless?
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Science + Technology
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Ryan Layer, University of Colorado Boulder
Tumors contain thousands of genetic changes, but only a few are actually cancer-causing. A quicker way to identify these driver mutations could lead to more targeted cancer treatments.
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Education
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Aman Yadav, Michigan State University; Michael Lachney
Without university-level programs to provide teacher training for advanced computer science, states will not be able to offer high-quality computer science education to all students.
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Economy + Business
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Erynn Beaton, The Ohio State University; Megan LePere-Schloop, The Ohio State University
After studying this #MeToo problem for years, two researchers have drafted a toolkit to help nonprofits address it.
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Environment + Energy
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Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University; Aaron Hill, Colorado State University
Would you trust a weather forecast made by a machine that had learned how weather systems behaved by reviewing thousands of past weather maps?
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