Gun profits and the Las Vegas massacre

For the gun cartels, black lives are not alone in not mattering. No lives matter.

To the politicians who are supported by them, do any lives matter?

I don't know about you, but Trump's tweet in response to the Las Vegas shootings left me freezing cold.

"My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!"

Thoughts and prayers by the truckload: shipping is free, a friend of mine commented on Facebook earlier today. He's so right.

How could they leave our children so vulnerable?

Years ago, in 1999, I marched in Washington, D.C. with my then-three-year old son. It was not long after the mass shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which 19 children died. That beautiful day in August, e hundreds of thousands of other women assembled in the mall for a 'Million Mom March' against gun violence. As we listened to speaker after speaker tell their stories of surviving terrifying gun violence, everyone in the mall must have been asking the same question, like I was, in their heads: 'Why?'

Why would we as a mothers settle for this? Certainly this march would show elected officials they had to act. They had to get guns off the streets.

And how?

How could the government leave our children so vulnerable?

Why wouldn't the U.S. implement a bipartisan deal to enact gun control, like Australia did to huge success after a mass shooting in 1996?

Why can't America engineer a successful gun buyback program, like Argentina did to reduce its gun crimes?

Senseless mass murders like yesterday's in Las Vegas, where again, so many young people died, leave one feeing beyond shocked and broken-hearted for the families of the survivors and the deceased, the victims of this senseless atrocity. Yes, they will be resilient. Hopefully, they'll recover. If lucky, they will go on. But some wounds simply never heal.

And, don't believe for a moment that if everyone at the Las Vegas concert had a gun, they could have taken out the shooter. Rather than protecting citizens, rampant gun ownership is why people hurt themselves more than protecting their loved ones. Just look at the statistics.

In the face of the gun profits, #nolivesmatter

Despite the horror and outrage over the Las Vegas shooting, gun shares actually surged in the hours following the tragedy.

You heard me right: surged.

Shares of Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands (formerly Smith & Wesson), rose more than four per cent this morning. Traders bet gun sales rising ahead of the fear of tighter gun control legislation as a result of the shooting.

How many times must we go through this exercise? Tighter gun control legislation doesn't happen after a deadly mass shooting in the U.S. It didn't happen after Sandy Hook, it didn't happen after Orlando, and with this current government, it's almost certainly not happening despite the huge death toll in Las Vegas.

What's become more predictable, instead, is a rise in gun sales, gun shares, and a spike in people citing the Constitution to defend their right to own firearms.

This isn't about freedom. This is about gun corporations profiting from people's deaths and mass shooting tragedies.

This issue isn't a culture war between left and right. This is an issue of public safety under constant threat because of sophisticated propaganda crafted by special interests driven by a greed for profits, no matter what the human cost.