What Price?

 Hey, sorry to be the one telling you this, but in the midst of all this school closing and Entertainment Weekly ceasing to publish, people have continued to shoot guns. At one another. 

It's that last bit that that is the problem. When folks kill other folks with guns, it ruins more than one day. It has a ripple effect. So much so that it can take years of lengthy litigation to arrive at some sort of settlement. The families of the victims of Sandy Hook were just awarded such a deal this past week. Seventy-three million dollars. Seven years after twenty children and six adults were murdered at an elementary school in Newtown, Remington has been ordered to pay what amounts to just under three million dollars a life for its part in manufacturing the weapon used by the killer. Remington has been in and out of Chapter Eleven bankruptcy since the massacre in Connecticut, and while they have been shielded from most of the storm by insurers and lawyers, this one will leave a mark. 

A mark for all twenty-six first graders and the staff that tried to protect them. The children would be teenagers if not for the Bushmaster AR-15 style rifle brought to you by the financially and morally bankrupt folks at Remington. 

And now it should be noted that it was just a few months ago that the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting won their lawsuit against the Department of Justice. The suit alleged that the FBI failed to act on tips that might have stopped the killer from taking his guns to school and killing seventeen fellow students and faculty. The amount of this award was one hundred twenty-seven and a half million dollars. Which is a slightly better return on souls lost than their first grade counterparts in Connecticut. That works out to be seven and a half million dollars a body. Of course, this has to be amortized over the course of the four years since Valentine's Day was forever ruined for the survivors of this mass shooting.  

Meanwhile, it should be noted that in spite of these judgements, gun manufacturers continue to do banner business. People in the United States bought more than twenty million guns last year. It would seem that we can afford it. 

Not the victims, mind you. Just the ones pulling the trigger. And the ones making the money from the ones pulling the trigger. 

Sleep tight, America.