If you don't support more gun control ...

In the wake of shootings like the one two days ago at a Florida high school, the standard response of Republican lawmakers to calls for stricter gun control is to assert that (1) mental health is really the issue, (2) the gun control laws on the books are enough but they aren't being enforced vigorously enough, and/or (3) such shootings are the price of a meaningful Second Amendment.

If you embrace #3 in spite of the possibility of your own or other loved ones' kids dying, I don't know what to say.

Reasons #1 and #2, though, are possible to answer objectively. Or at least, we could answer them objectively if Congress didn't forbid the government to do research into gun violence!

Yes, that little provision got tucked into legislation a while back at the behest of, who else, the National Rifle Association. It's a restriction that makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense unless you are the nuttiest of gun nuts, and it's way, way, way past time for us to stop letting those nuts dictate the terms of our gun laws.

So how about we stop threatening the Centers for Disease Control with loss of funding for merely investigating gun violence as a public health issue?

It's nothing short of abject cowardice to forbid this research.

Enough with abject cowardice. Tell your Congressional representative to end this stupidity.