[pjc50]

Worth looking at the NRA's ties to Russian agent, Maria Butina, and this weird little trip to Russia in 2015: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nra-2015-moscow-trip-wasnt-o...

The NRA are incredibly divisive, and it looks like help was offered to keep them doing that.

> The rationalization of an insane gun culture is incessant and foolish. Guns are a tool and the bullshit that somehow the civilian population would "defend" itself against military coups by the US military, or even more ridiculous, against invasion, is an excuse to allow the ongoing fetish of guns.

This - the politics of guns and political violence in the US - is arguably a bigger factor than the guns themselves. The gun does not carry out a mass shooting by itself. And very few mass shooters decide purely on their own to do it; there's a radicalization pipeline. That is why the US has a higher mass shooting rate than other countries with lots of guns.