The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed.

The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed, fostering apathy to finding solutions rather than galvanizing communities to act.

Director Steve Dettelbach’s comments to The Associated Press came after he met this past week with family members of some of the 18 people killed in October at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine by a U.S. Army reservist who later took his own life.

He said people must not accept that gun violence is a prevalent part of American life.

  • DaDragon
    10•4 months ago

    To be fair to those legislators, that amendment is fairly clear with its ‘shall not be infringed’ statement. The only way out of that issue is to pass a new amendment invalidating the old one.

    • queermunist she/her
      9•4 months ago

      Except that’s not how it was interpreted until District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008.

      Up until then, the right to bear arms was directly connected to the necessity of a well regulated militia. Then the Court reinterpreted it to say that the right is completely unconnected to service in a militia, and now guns are much more difficult to regulate.

      Don’t fall for the propaganda. The Supreme Court can just make up whatever shit they want. All that matters is who the Justices are.

    • FaceDeer
      5•4 months ago

      No, that’s not being fair at all. The amendment in full reads:

      A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

      A full half of that single sentence is talking about “a well regulated militia” being the justification for allowing people to keep arms. There have been decades of flim-flammery ignoring that completely and trying to imply that the intent was to say “Militias are good for national security given how we just went through a rebellion that depended on them. Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, everyone should be allowed to carry portable machine guns and concealed hand-cannons the likes of which were never even imagined in our time.”

      This is a nutty interpretation.