For most Americans, the numbers in the news over the July 4 holiday season were more than depressing: 23 killed and 130 injured, including children and teens, in 23 mass shootings Saturday through early Wednesday, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

That is American exceptionalism at its worst. No other developed country comes close to the United States in terms of casualties and costs of gun violence.

Still other Americans, it turns out, were focused on other numbers and celebrating! Why? Because June was the 47th consecutive month in which more than a million firearms were sold in a country that already has more guns than people.

What better way to celebrate America’s birthday than by exercising one of its most cherished and fundamental freedoms? Dan Zimmerman of the pro-firearms blog The Truth About Guns wrote about the fourth. That’s exactly what the American public did in June and continues to do, month after month.

Actual gun sales are likely even higher. The estimate of more than 1 million comes from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun trafficking organization, based on data from the loophole-ridden

federal background checks database. These numbers counter the demands of gun control politicians to surrender rights, Zimmerman approvingly quoted another gun lawyer. Americans choose differently.

In fact, Americans do

not

choose differently: Eight out of 10 registered voters, including most Republicans, want criminal background and mental health checks for all gun buyers; a minimum age of 21 and a 30-day waiting period for purchasing firearms; and gun ownership bans for people considered a danger to themselves or others. And six in 10 voters, including a third of Republicans, support a ban on assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Those were the findings of a recent Fox News poll, consistent over time with countless other national polls.

The discrepancy between the overwhelming support for commonsense gun restrictions that Americans rarely agree with such margins and the inability to enact them nationwide is one of the strongest evidence of the country’s anti-democratic drift, driven by a radicalized Republican party. Side.

Amid the holiday carnage, President Biden again called for gun control, powerless words that are now as predictable as the next hail of bullets. Also predictable: the wanton thoughts and helplessness of the MAGA Republicans who run the House, many of them flaunting miniature AR-15 pins and enslaved by gun-nut groups and a like-minded

minority

of their voters.

Democrats barely control the Senate, but they are just as deaf to Biden’s pleas. Aside from last year’s bipartisan move to moderately tighten gun restrictions, the party has been anxious to push through gun control since losing control of both houses of Congress in a gun lobby-driven backlash against the assault weapons ban which was adopted in 1994. press the issue of when their majority is at stake in next year’s election. Senate Democrats are trying to keep their seats in the red states of Montana, West Virginia and Ohio, as well as the gun-friendly swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The paralysis at the federal level creates a patchwork of state gun laws. Says Republican control is erasing gun regulations: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, building his Republican presidential platform, recently defended an insane law that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a license in a state that has seen some of the country’s worst gun killings. The states controlled by the Democrats have introduced some new restrictions, including a ban on assault weapons

,

which can be circumvented by crossing state lines. And for those with a divided government, nothing is happening despite public support for more restrictions.

And now political cowards in both parties have the excuse that the Republican Supreme Court has made it much harder for gun control to pass constitutional scrutiny. Last year’s Bruen decision ruled that judges should no longer have to weigh the public interest when considering whether gun restrictions designed to make communities safer are constitutional. Instead, judges should look to the country’s historical tradition of gun regulation, which is in fact less hostile to gun control than conservative judges claimed.

Like the courts that overturned abortion rights, the gun decision has already led to political and legal chaos. And there’s more to come. A three-judge panel of the far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit recently cited Bruen when he struck down a federal law prohibiting people with domestic violence criminal records from owning firearms.

On the last day of June, that 47th consecutive month of one million-plus gun sales, the Supreme Court announced that in its next term it would decide whether states can keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. The stakes couldn’t be higher: About half of the women killed by guns in this country are victims of domestic violence. But gun control advocates and victims of abuse aren’t optimistic about where the court will go: Public safety no longer trumps the expanded reading of the Second Amendment.

I was hesitant at first

to write about gun politics again, as I addressed this issue in this column, having just written about gun politics

in March following a shooting at a Nashville school. The nation is hardened, I told myself.

But this cannot be written off as normal. These numbers are not just numbers. They are people.

@jackiekcalmes