We pledge allegiance to gun manufacturers and the NRA of America, and for campaign funds for which they give, we sacrifice, under God, our integrity and compassion for all. -The Pledge Taken by Too Many PoliticiansI write these words after hearing of yet another school shooting in the United States. This time a shooter killed at least four people at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin before killing himself. At least five others were taken to the hospital with bullet wounds. Related Is socialism really so anti-American? I say its time for a revolution. With less than two weeks to go in 2024, there have been at least 385 mass shootings, according to theGun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot. But gun violence in the United States is so common as to be unremarkable, almost normal. At the height of the pandemic in2021, for example, gun-related violence resulted in 26,328 suicides and 20,328 homicides. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today Earlier this month, Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old highly educated young man from a wealthy family, allegedly acted out the rage many of us have against mega-insurance companies and other blood-sucking corporations by murdering the CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies in the country.Even a cursory glance on several social media sites shows the extent to which Mangione has already become a cultural icon, a hero in the realm of David slaying the mighty Goliath, or Robin Hood challenging the powerful Mayor of Nottingham on behalf of the poorest among us.But we cannot separate the shooting of children and teachers from the shooting of a a CEO of a highly profitable corporation because each case testifies to the violent nature of the United States of America, which was founded and maintained on violence. In the Constitutions Second Amendment, the framers of the United States guaranteed its free people the right to carry and shoot terrifying weapons, all while enslaving people transported from Africa against their will and robbing the people who had preceded Europeans by thousands of years of their lands, livelihoods, and their very lives.While the founders were mostly wise men who crafted what many consider a brilliant and enduring blueprint for a new nation, they were also products of their times who had human shortcomings and biases.Just coming off a war of independence against one of the worlds great colonial powers, leaders thought it reasonable to ensure the free people the capability of defending themselves against any potentially tyrannical government. In this regard, they established the Second Amendment, granting Americans the right to bear arms.Since then, firearms and the culture supporting it has been encoded into the very DNA of American identity. But what may have been reasonable in the 18thcentury stands today as unreasonable and deadly without substantial reform. When gunpowder changed the world Around 850 of the Common Era, the Chinese invented a powdery mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate that, when ignited with a spark, created an explosion. Though they discovered it quite accidentally when attempting to invent an elixir for immortality, they quickly utilized it for defensive and offensive advantages in wars against internal and cross-border enemies.First used to stuff tubes in which the Chinese tied a fuse and lit to propel as a hand-held rocket aimed at their adversaries, gunpowder transformed the art and scale of killing, the likes of which the world had never seen. Throughout the centuries across the planet, emerging technologies led to the creation of more and deadlier hand cannons, as they were once called.Attributed to the Portuguese in the 1400s, the matchlock mechanism became the first known mechanically firing gun. Users attached a wick to a clamp that, when triggered, sprang into the gunpowder. The Spanish carried these with them on their invasions into the Americas, and the Pilgrims brought them from England when they arrived in what would become known as North America. Christopher Columbus took with him matchlocks and other types of hand cannons and breech-loading wrought-iron weapons and arquebuses an early type of portable firearm supported on a tripod or a forked rest. When he sailed from Haiti, he ordered shots fired through the shipwrecked hull of the Santa Maria to frighten indigenous populations with the power of European firearms.European inventors in 1509 replaced wicks with friction-wheel mechanisms to create wheellock guns. These generated sparks to ignite the gunpowder. Later, as would become common in Colonial America, residents used flintlock guns with flint-ignition mechanisms, invented around 1630.The Long Rifle (also called the Kentucky Rifle or Pennsylvania Rifle) was developed with spiral grooves, giving iron balls a spiraling motion, which improved overall stability and accuracy. Combatants used these firearms as major weaponry during the so-called French and Indian War, as well as in the American Revolutionary War. At the end of the 16thcentury in Germany and other European countries, firearms technicians developed a wheel gun (revolver) that included a revolving cylinder containing several chambers and at least one barrel for firing. Now, shooters no longer had to reload following each shot but could unload up to six bullets at their intended targets. In 1836 in the U.S., Samuel Colt mass-produced these multi-shot guns, popularly called six shooters.By the 1850s, shotguns (also referred to as scatterguns) became popular. Usually fired from the shoulder, they used a single-fixed shell to fire numerous small spherical pellets called shot or a solid projectile called a slug. Today, these firearms range from single-action to semi- and fully automatic varieties.In 1862, the Union forces popularized the Gatling gun, developed by Richard Gatling, as a weapon of mass destruction. This rapid-fire gun was the forerunner of the machine gun. Then came the Cartridge Revolver developed by Colt in 1872 a .44-caliber rear-loading weapon.The technology with its capacity to injure, mutilate, dismember, and kill increases with each passing day. If Leif Erikson, the first known European to set foot in North America, had had access to these later technologies, there is little doubt that he would have brought firearms to those shores. How free are we, really?Until 1996, Australia had relatively high murder rates, but a tragic incident at Port Arthur, Tasmania on April 28, 1996, changed everything. On that date, a man opened fire on a group of tourists, killing 35 and wounding another 23. The massacre was the worst mass murder in Australias history.Taking decisive action, newly-electedconservativePrime Minister John Howard negotiated a bipartisan deal between the national, state, and local governments in enacting comprehensive gun safety measures, which included a massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and laws prohibiting private firearms sales, mandatory registration by owners of all weapons, and the requirement that all potential buyers of guns at the time of purchase give a genuine reason other than general or overarching self-defense without documentation of necessity.By 1996, polls showed overwhelming public support of approximately 90% for the new measures. And though firearms-related injuries and deaths have not totally come to an end, homicides by firearms fell by 59% between 1995 and 2006, withnocorresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides and a 65% reduction in gun-related suicides. In addition, there have been significant drops in robberies involving firearms, and contrary to fears by some, no increase in the overall number of home invasions. In the decade preceding the Port Arthur massacre, Australia recorded 11 mass shootings. No mass shootings have occurred in the 20+ years since the measures went into effect as of 2016.Just six days after a terrible hate-inspired 2019 shooting of Muslims praying at two Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced sweeping new firearms regulations, which included banning semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines and a mandatory government buyback of such previously sold weapons.The U.S. Congress enacted a brief federal ban on assault weapons, The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, in September 1994. The ban, which also included barring high-capacity magazines, expired in September 2004 as required in its 10-year sunset provision. Congress has not reauthorized the measure. Instead, a provision inserted as a rider into the 1996 federal government omnibus spending bill known as the Dickey Amendment named after Arkansas Republican Rep. Jay Dickey and lobbied heavily by the National Rifle Association was passed by Congress into law. It mandated that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.So, what limits at the national, state, and local levels should we as a nation consider on the sale and ownership of firearms? Many people within the larger gun safety movement have proposed common sense solutions. Unfortunately, what one person determines as common sense, another person considers freedom killing.How free, though, are any of us when tens of thousands of people are murdered annually and tens of thousands more lose their lives by guns through accident or suicide? How free are we as the gun lobby purchases our politicians in the service of firearms manufacturers as part of their quest to acquire even more power and profits? With the relatively easy access to firearms in the United States, most of us have already been touched by the ravages of gun violence. Hardly a day goes by that we do not hear of yet another high-visibility mass shooting, which does not even begin to reflect the seemingly countless number of lives taken in small towns and large cities throughout the nation that dont make it to the national spotlight.What will it take for us to cease fighting insanity with insanity? How many more of our precious people will have their lives cut short under the banner of freedom?Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.