The House Appropriations Committee has just voted to stop the funding research of gun violence. Mind you, one has to ask why it needs taxpayer money to undertake research on the subject. 30,000 Ameticans every year are killed by gunshots. That fact should be sufficient for intelligent peopke to conclude that the equivalent of a major war cannot be allowed to continue every year of our lives, and that at least some safety measures should be enacted.

But no, the NRA won’t allow it. Brought up on Hollywood Westerns, where real men fight gun battles in the street and the baddies are always dead at the end of it, they really think they are going to defend themselves against crazy gunmen by taking their own loaded guns into churches, bars etc in the expectation of being magically transported to O.K Corral, where, of course, their first shot kills the baddie. I am mildly exasperated, I guess.