No, the Gun Culture Won’t Always Win

“Too many guns.

Too little hope.

After each succeeding gun massacre, a dull fatalism grips the American mind. The victims of such massacres are counted in the thousands; the victims of individual murder, of suicide, and of heartrending accident by now are counted in the tens of thousands. Yet action to save lives is vetoed again and again by an implacable minority who see gun ownership as integral to their identity.

Political realists have surrendered: Nothing can be done. The gun always wins.

Yet the realists may themselves be falling out of date.

The National Rifle Association is in crisis. The corruption and self-dealing that have pervaded the organization have exploded into public view. Perhaps it is no surprise that a bad cause attracts bad people. What is a surprise is that those bad people have incurred serious legal risks, sustaining their financially troubled organization with transfers from its charitable foundation—more than $100 million since 2012. (Because the NRA engages in political activity, donations to the NRA are not tax deductible; donations to the charitable foundation are.) Such transfers are closely hemmed by law, and it does not seem that the NRA has been careful about the law.”