NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Abstract

At the time of writing this Editor’s Note, it has been but a few weeks since the horrifying school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022, that killed 19 children and two teachers, and the supermarket massacre of ten people in Buffalo, New York ten days earlier. Both lone gunmen were 18 years old and both used legally acquired AR-15-style weapons (Edmondson 2022). The events catapulted gun control debates again into the headlines and culminated in swift legislation proposals in Congress. On June 8, 2022, a bitterly divided House—voting largely along party lines—approved a stricter gun control bill package by 223 to 204 votes but also revealed the partisan chasm that continues to afflict passing effective firearms control legislation in the United States. Among other things, the bill would ban under-21s from legally purchasing semiautomatic rifles, increase requirements for gun storage in private households, and prohibit the sale of magazines holding over 15 rounds (Edmondson 2022). The acrimonious arguments in the House were predictably partisan with Democrats focusing on protecting children from gun violence while Republicans highlighted that the proposal would violate Second Amendment rights. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH; cited in Edmondson 2022), opined that protecting children “is important—it sure is. But this bill doesn’t do it. What this bill does is take away Second Amendment rights, God-given rights, protected by our Constitution, from law-abiding American citizens.”