CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERIKA

An Ugly New Era of States Rights

BY PETER CERTOFacebook

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The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade — and with it, half a century of constitutional precedent.

At least 26 states are now likely to criminalize abortions, often without exceptions for rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies. In Louisiana, people seeking abortions could even face execution, which doesn’t strike me as particularly pro-life.

A few states are already rushing to attack contraception too, with officials in Idaho and Louisiana pushing to ban IUDs, the morning after pill, and other common birth control methods. Hardline lawmakers are also likely to ban methods of conception, including in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Down the line, experts warn that the rights to interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, and even divorce, parental custody, and the right to accept or refuse medical treatment could be in jeopardy. People’s control over their own intimate decisions and private lives is at stake.

But among the most alarming things in the ruling is its sneering pretense that this is somehow about safeguarding democracy. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito.

That’s the same “states’ rights” deceit once used to defend segregation. The truth is that in many states, so-called “elected representatives” pick their voters — not vice versa. And that’s leading to a new wave of extremism in statehouses.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called states “laboratories of democracy.” These days, as former Hamilton County, Ohio commissioner David Pepper put it in his book of the same name, many have become “laboratories of autocracy.”

Pepper and I share a home state that’s a case in point. In Ohio, a Trump-appointed federal judge just allowed Ohio Republicans to force illegally gerrymandered maps on voters, who twice voted overwhelmingly for fairer districts. The state Supreme Court ruled four times that the maps illegally diluted Ohioans’ voting power, but we’re stuck with them anyway.

Most Ohioans are pro-choice, but thanks to maps like these we now have one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. That’s why “returning power over basic civil rights to illegally gerrymandered states like Ohio is an absolute disaster in waiting,” concludes David DeWitt in the Ohio Capital Journal.

It gets even more absurd elsewhere.

In states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly gotten more votes than their Republican counterparts. But rigged maps keep giving Republicans sizable majorities — which they’ve then used in all three states to strip power from Democratic governors elected statewide.

Across the country, methods like these are used to ram through extreme legislation that ignores the will of voters. For example, recent polling suggests at least 34 states plus D.C. have pro-choice majorities or pluralities. Many are banning abortion anyway.

It’s not just abortion. Again and again, unaccountable state governments are showing themselves incapable of decent governance.

Florida is ripping up K-12 math books — yes, math books — that allegedly teach “critical race theory.” Unhinged Tennessee lawmakers are calling for literal book burnings. And one-party states nationwide are making it harder to vote.

Frankly, things aren’t much better at the federal level — and Alito should know.

Five of the six conservative seats on the Supreme Court, including Alito’s, were appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote — and confirmed by Republican Senate “majorities” representing a minority of Americans.

The same Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression while lifting bans on money in politics. This court, in short, has made it much harder for people to choose their own representatives.

The loser here isn’t the big-D Democratic Party. It’s small-d democracy. When politicians can do whatever they want to us, everyone loses.

Decades ago, it took a national civil rights movement and federal legislation to reclaim common sense and decency from extremist state governments. Today, it’s also going to take reforming the Supreme Court.

How Alito Cherrypicked History in Dobbs

BY MAURIZIO VALSANIA
JULY 8, 2022

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Justice Samuel Alito appears spellbound by the 19th century.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision Alito wrote overruling 50 years of constitutional protection for women’s right to get an abortion, he deploys arguments that are based on several historical precedents. He uses the phrase “history and tradition” regularly.

But for Alito, the 19th century looks like the true golden age: “In 1803, the British Parliament made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy and authorized the imposition of severe punishment.”

He goes on and on: “In this country during the 19th century, the vast majority of the States enacted statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy.”

“By 1868, the year when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified,” Alito concludes, “three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime.”

But in his rather selective forays into history, Alito doesn’t ask what to me, as a historian, constitutes a set of fundamental questions: Why was abortion eventually criminalized during that time? What was the broad cultural and intellectual context of that period? And, more important, is there something peculiar about the 19th century?

As far as women’s bodies and abortion are concerned, the 19th century saw a decrease in the trust in, and power of, women themselves.

William Buchan’s book ‘Domestic Medicine,’ first published in 1769 and found in many American homes, contained instructions for an abortion. National Library of Medicine.

18th-century woman: Active and in control

To begin with, 17th- and 18th-century legal authorities Edward Coke, Matthew Hale and William Blackstone had all advocated for or condoned abortion. They fretted only when the procedure was carried out after “quickening,” the moment when the mother realizes that the fetus moves in her womb, approximately the fourth month of pregnancy.

As a medical procedure, abortion was widespread in Colonial and 18th-century America. By using more or less safe techniques, midwives and medical practitioners performed many types of operations on their patients. The woman could easily die, of course; but when she sought an abortion, no social, legal or religious force would have blocked her.

Also, a woman could choose from many available remedies rather than have an operation. Derived from juniper bushes, “savin,” or Juniperus sabina, was one of the most popular abortifacients. Other herbs and concoctions were similarly taken: pennyroyal, tansy, ergot, Seneca snakeroot or cotton root bark.

Benjamin Franklin inserted an abortion recipe in a popular textbook he republished in Philadelphia in 1748. He didn’t prompt any scandal.

The truth is that America’s founders, together with their contemporaries, had a rather democratic understanding of the female body. They believed that women, physiologically speaking, weren’t qualitatively different from men; the two sexes were equal and complementary.

Men’s and women’s composition, medical doctors argued, was identical in essence – the only difference was anatomical, in that male sexual organs were more externally distended than female organs.

Just like the male, the female was thought of as fully in control of the workings of her physiology, including her sexuality. It was believed that both the man and the woman had to reach orgasm, better if simultaneously, for pregnancy to ensue.

This made 18th-century men attentive to the satisfaction of their female partners, though for utilitarian reasons.

Especially when sex was aimed at procreation, the woman had to be as active as the male partner. The 18th-century woman was active and in control. She trusted her bodily feelings, including her pleasures.

And crucially, only she could detect whether quickening had taken place in her womb. Consequently, she could immediately tell whether terminating a pregnancy at a given time was acceptable. Or if it was a crime.

1917

19th-century American abortionist Ann Trow Lohman, who performed abortions in New York City and was referred to by one anti-abortion advocate as ‘the monster in human shape.’ Wikipedia.

19th-century woman: Weak and chaste

The 19th century changed all that. The understanding of physiology and the mechanisms of the female body underwent a deep transformation. European and American doctors, now, saw women as essentially different from men: From a “one body” model, the medical discourse shifted toward a “two body” model.

Women’s level of self-determination decreased accordingly. Suddenly, they were not only weaker or softer than men, but inherently passive, too. Instead of being encouraged to take part in sex, actively and with vigor, 19th-century women were expected to be withdrawn.

They were thus recast as pure, chaste and modest. Commendable women were virgins, wives, mothers. Or else they were prostitutes, nearly criminals, which reflects the Victorian dualistic mindset. Instead of being urged to trust the quickening and other physiological events happening in her womb or her vagina, the honest woman had to trust her doctor.

Anti-abortion campaigns began in earnest in the mid-19th century. They were waged mostly by the American Medical Association, founded in 1847, and were fundamentally anti-feminist. They chastised women for shunning the Victorian “self-sacrifice” expected of mothers.

Anti-abortion campaigns were targeted against midwives and tried to discredit women’s firsthand experience of pregnancy. Male doctors claimed pregnancy as a medical terrain – a realm that belonged to them exclusively.

Based on women’s own bodily sensations – not on medical diagnosis – quickening was denigrated. Quickening, of course, made doctors dependent on women’s self-diagnosis and judgment. Dr. Horatio R. Storer, the leader of the medical campaigns against abortion, described quickening as “in fact but a sensation.” In such a context, it could no longer be framed as the basis from where all moral, social and legal standards emerged.

In the Dobbs decision, Alito says: “The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” This is a historical fact: Protection of the right to abortion wasn’t around in America before Roe.

But it is also an incomplete picture of the full story. The criminalization of abortion, plus the decentralization of the woman’s experience, plus the medicalization of her feelings that led to that decision, are facets that belong to the long-gone 19th century.

No American lives in that century any more – not even Justice Alito.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


Maurizio Valsania is Professor of American History at the Università di Torino.

Ukraine Reconstruction, Peace and Justice

BY DANIEL WARNERFacebook

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Is it possible to speak of reconstruction while a war is still going on? The Swiss government and Ukraine co-organized an international conference in Lugano July 4-5 to deal with rebuilding Ukraine. Although not as high-level as the recent G-7 or NATO summits, the aim of the conference, according to Ignazio Cassis, the Swiss Foreign minister who also holds the rotating Swiss presidency, was to have a “Lugano Declaration” similar to the Marshall Plan that described the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. One thousand participants from 40 countries and representatives from international organizations attended as well as almost one hundred representatives from Ukraine.

With the Ukraine war still going on – the conference was initiated prior to the February 24 invasion – the challenge to rebuild is daunting. “We will help Ukraine to win this war and to win peace,” said the head of the European Commission. “The challenges are colossal,” she added, “but not insurmountable.”

Rebuilding Ukraine during the fighting adds further complexity to the relation between peace and justice. Those who favor peace point to ending the fighting as soon as possible. “Priority number one remains ending the war, because without the war ending, the suffering will definitely continue,” said a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representative in Ukraine. Those who insist on justice first, say that human rights and humanitarian violators must held accountable immediately. “No peace without justice,” they advocate.

What about rebuilding? The final Declaration, besides condemning Russian aggression and re-iterating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, was designed as a road map to help Ukraine develop a Recovery and Development Plan. With many people returning home, “It is essential that quick repairs, improving infrastructure and public services happens as soon as possible,” said the UNDP representative. The World Health Organization also sent representatives to the conference, underlying the need to rebuild hundreds of health facilities hit by Russian strikes. Cassis stressed that “full transparency and surveillance of financial flows,” were also on the agenda in a country that ranked 122 out of 180 in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perception Index.

Even if the war ended tomorrow, the rebuilding needs are enormous: More than 10 million Ukrainians have been affected by the war with one/fourth of the population needing basic food supplies; 24,000 km of road and 5.5 million houses have been damaged or destroyed; environmental damage is considerable; almost five million jobs have been lost and it is estimated that the economy will shrink 41.1 per cent this year.

But the war has not ended.  Experts say optimistically that certain areas can be helped immediately at the same time planning should go on for the future. The blend of humanitarian needs and development projects is part of a hopeful holistic approach: “We need innovative partnerships between humanitarian actors who have the capacity to go as close as possible to the frontlines, and financial institutions and development actors who traditionally engage with state entities on much more long-term programs,” said a Red Cross official.

It is estimated that Ukraine needs $700 billion dollars to rebuild.

The final Declaration focused on seven principles, including government reforms and transparency, sustainability and fighting corruption. Future conferences on rebuilding Ukraine have already been planned in Britain and Germany in the next two years.

Is it premature to talk of rebuilding Ukraine during the war? Historians point to discussions of rebuilding Europe during World War II leading to the final Marshall Plan once the war had ended. And one could easily point to the final Declaration as a wish list of liberal ideals for a country that has a history of corruption. “Corruption in Ukraine is still very present,” said the former head of the European anti-corruption office. “Systemically, this is not a state based on law, or just a little,” he observed.

Russia will not go away. Although the aim of the Western powers seems to be more and more to weaken Russia – as stated forthrightly by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin – President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen’s statement about winning the war and winning the peace overstates the reality on the ground. Some negotiated settlement will have to take place rather than an outright victory or surrender.

Rebuilding Ukraine and the Lugano Declaration are part of a process. But focusing on the aftermath of the conflict should not take energy and time away from ending the war. And while the ideal of having a stable, functioning government in Kiev is admirable, fundamental questions remain such as does the future of Ukraine include the Donbas region? And if so, how?

Certain aspects of the geopolitical reality of Ukraine cannot change. In addition to its frontier and history with Russia, one cannot start from scratch in rebuilding. Can one imagine a modern, digital, rules-based functioning state? A new Finland or Estonia? There are good reasons why Ukraine was not included in the Membership Action Plan of NATO and why some countries hesitate to include Ukraine in the European Union.

No amount of money or promises from exterior sources will change the internal situation in Ukraine. While the Russian military invasion has shocked the world, meetings like the Lugano conference risk repeating errors made after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It will finally be up to the Ukrainian people, including those in the Donbas region, to rebuild their country, with, we assume, considerable help from their friends.

Daniel Warner is the author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. (Lynne Rienner). He lives in Geneva.

The Illusion of Military Dominance

BY KEVIN MARTIN - BRAD WOLF

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Image by Diego González.

United States military analysts love strategies and the theories behind them. The theories provide what appear to be perfectly reasonable and rational approaches to warfighting, even offering a sense of certainty about the outcome. After all, they’ve been designed with military precision. Authorized personnel at the Pentagon or military think tanks are assigned to create strong, catchy names for the theories. A longtime theory is “Escalation Dominance,” which has a close cousin called “Full-Spectrum Dominance.”

Both theories promote the idea that effective deterrence comes from being able to defeat the enemy in every step of a potential conflict, in any place, and at any time, from small-scale skirmishes between proxy guerillas up to and including nuclear war, and possible escalation within a specific conflict. Such strategies would, in theory, deter any adversary from initiating any step up the escalation ladder.

Like all military strategies they sound convincing enough on paper, even alluring. What red-blooded American, or Russian, would walk away from dominance? But in the concrete, these theories fail to deliver, and we could quite likely end up with escalation disaster. Escalation Dominance has already failed given that Russia invaded Ukraine and took a substantial step up the escalation ladder, with perhaps more to come.

A hubris undermines such military theories, a woefully misplaced and dangerous self-confidence, not to mention a stunning disregard for the millions of lives sacrificed if such theories are put to the test, and fail. Gaming this out with computers is one thing, unleashing it on the world another. Reading the enemy’s mind once the escalation begins and missiles are flying is futile, even suicidal.

Some say Ukraine should not have relinquished its vast nuclear arsenal when the Cold War ended in exchange for protective assurances from the West. In the eyes of some commentators, President Zelensky implied that Ukraine might now have to develop its own nuclear deterrence program. Putin quickly responded with retaliatory threats. Meanwhile, military analysts tinker with their theories and fine-tune their messages as world events continue to stump them.

These military analysts are paid well, often by the U.S. government, weapons manufacturers, and the mass media, all of whom have an interest in warmaking. Military think tanks are funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars, as are military research programs at American universities across the nation. We spend tens of millions of dollars playing computer war games. We spend close to $1 trillion a year funding personnel and machinery for actual warmaking.

Where are the millions for peace? Is it unfathomable to think that the same money, talent, and resources could be invested in creating a strategy for a new security arrangement in Europe that would include Russia? After the atrocities that Putin and his military have inflicted on Ukraine, it is a bitter pill to swallow. But the alternative is either a drawn-out proxy war with Russia which bleeds the Ukrainian and Russian people (while bleeding Western economies), or to continue up the escalation ladder with deadlier weapons delivered and deployed by Ukraine. In either case, far more die. And as the fog of war sets in, escalation dominance becomes escalation guesswork. At some point, the military must concede it possesses only a theory. Given their track record, risking all of humanity on one of their theories is a gamble for the delusional.

A new security arrangement including Russia would mean the gradual phase out of NATO. Russia, one of the major Petro-states, could be weaned off its fossil fuel exports and brought into a new economy of alternative energies. As opposed to our unkept promises of the 1990s, we would truly integrate the Russian economy into Western economies without the perceived threat of NATO. Compromises would be necessary, on both sides. We could slowly, gradually escalate towards peace.

Peace is no harder (or easier) than war, and yet we are obsessed with war. We have simply not dedicated the resources to wage peace in the same determined, relentless way we have waged war. No million dollar think tanks to develop peace strategies. No big dollar grants for university peace initiatives. No highly paid peace analysts.

We posit no sexy title for our strategy. Peace, and only peace. That’s it. We can split the atom and rocket to the stars. Surely we can resolve our disputes without incinerating each other. We need set our minds, money, and resources to it. Dominance is for tyrants. It must fall and humanity must prevail. Peace is everything.

Kevin Martin, is President of Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with more than 100,000 supporters nationwide.  Brad Wolf, a former lawyer, professor, and community college dean, is co-founder of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, PA and writes for various publications.

FAUX OUTRAGE

MSNBC guest faith leaders slam Supreme Court over Dobbs, reverend claims abortion is ‘not a biblical topic’

Nikolas Lanum
Fri, July 8, 2022

An MSNBC guest reverend vocal about her disagreement with the recent Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade said Friday on "Morning Joe" that abortion is not a "biblical topic."

During a conversation with faith leaders supportive of abortion rights, co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Reverend Dr. Selene Jones about the SCOTUS decision and whether the Bible is being used "incorrectly" to curb abortion access.

Jones, who also serves as the president of the Union Theological Seminary, told Brzezinski that abortion is "not a biblical topic" and claimed there are only "one or two" biblical references to abortion that undoubtedly prioritize the "life and agency" of the mother over a fetus.

"To turn around and act as if the Bible has a mandate that is anti-choice when the Bible on every page is affirming the agency of people and the care of the vulnerable, the poor, the orphan, the woman at every turn," Jones said.

ROE V. WADE OVERTURNED: REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM, OTHER FAITH LEADERS REACT TO 'SIGNIFICANT' ABORTION RULING

The reverend noted that 50 years ago the Southern Baptist Convention, which she said is now "100% anti-choice," came out with multiple platforms affirming women’s privacy and said that the state should not have a role in women’s pregnancy decisions.

Jones, alongside another reverend, Fred Davie, wrote an opinion piece published in The Hill in May that asserted overturning Roe threatened LGBTQ+ rights, and served as a rallying cry for faith leaders to defend them.

Earlier in the segment, Jones said that the Supreme Court ruling was about a "small minority" imposing their views on others.

"It runs directly against religious freedom," she added.

AS ABORTION DEBATE CONTINUES, SUBURBAN WOMEN SHARE HOW SUPREME COURT DECISION WILL INFLUENCE MIDTERM VOTES

Reverend Jennifer Butler, who shared the segment with Jones, chimed into the conversation by stating that religious freedom is now being used as a "weapon" by the Supreme Court in order to "discriminate against others."

The segment did not include any faith leaders who were pro-life.

The complete and staunch support for abortion among the MSNBC panel of faith leaders is notable given the breakdown of opinions on abortion among religious Americans.

According to Pew research, less than half of Catholic’s believe abortion should be legal in most cases. Meanwhile, 47% believe it should be illegal in most cases.

WHY DEMOCRATS ARE NOT PURSUING A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT FOR ABORTION RIGHTS

Furthermore, only 33% of evangelical protestants agree that abortion should be legal in most cases, while 63% think it should be illegal.

Generally Christians are close to a split on the legality of abortion, with 53% saying it should be legal while 45% said it should be illegal.

Two weeks after SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on abortion access Friday.

The economy is experiencing something not seen in decades, economist says

Nick Papantonis

Fri, July 8, 2022 

You’d be forgiven for thinking the economy has been sending mixed messages recently, with stellar jobs reports rolling out of Washington – and more dollars rolling out at payments at the grocery store due to inflation.

On Friday, a report showed the US added another 372,000 jobs in June, continuing the trend of economic recovery that gave President Biden a rare moment to cheer, while acknowledging the pain many are going through.

This period of high inflation and low unemployment is something that hasn’t been seen in more than 70 years, University of Florida Economist Dr. Amanda Phalin explained.

“If you’re someone who’s worried about a recession happening, today’s jobs report was fairly good news. It came in better than expected, we have replaced 98% of the jobs that we lost during the pandemic,” she said. “If you’re someone who’s worried about inflation, this is bad news. Because the economy is still humming along, prices are still rising.”

For much of the last year, Phalin has been predicting that inflation wouldn’t peak until mid-2022, something she stuck by in her interview Friday. According to her, supply chain issues should be beginning to resolve themselves, easing up on the pressure being put on prices.

However, she said the Biden administration could be doing more to facilitate that, while pressuring corporations to increase their inventory supplies to ensure this post-pandemic situation doesn’t repeat.

Phalin upgraded her future outlook ever so slightly, saying the chances that the Federal Reserve will be able to ease the nation out of inflation while avoiding a recession – a so-called “soft landing” – were better than before thanks to the continued strong jobs numbers.

“If the GDP data shows that we have negative growth, or have had negative growth for two consecutive quarters, one rule of thumb says, yes, we are in a recession,” she said. “But, our unemployment rate remains very low. It’s not even ticking upward, so that says we’re doing just fine.”

She summarized her thoughts by saying the economy wasn’t in bad shape, nor was it in great shape. It was somewhere in between, though a person’s outlook on it tended to be colored through their political views.

While she said it would still be very difficult to avoid a recession as it’s never been done before, she said if one were to happen, it would be far less severe than 2008.

Undo-Tweet: Right Wingers Implode Over Elon Musk’s Termination of Twitter Deal

 Nikki McCann Ramirez Fri, July 8, 2022

Elon Musk - Credit: Susan Walsh/AP

Elon Musk no longer wants Twitter, and right wing figures who saw the purchase as an opportunity to reshape the platform in their favor are devastated.

A statement filed to the Securities and Exchange commission by Musk’s attorneys declared that “Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement,” alleging that “Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement.”

It turns out buying a sports car for your midlife crisis carries far less financial penalties than backing out of a $44 billion dollar purchase agreement. The termination of the deal means Musk will likely need to pay a $1 billion penalty, that is if Twitter declines to take him to court and force the $44 billion purchase. 

Following the announcement of Musk’s intent to purchase the company, the Tesla billionaire’s own Twitter account became a hub for far-right reactionaries looking to influence the potential new owner of the platform. Now that the deal is seemingly dead in the water, the reaction from those same personalities has been a public mixture of panic and lament. 

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk unpinned the viral tweet announcing his return to Twitter due to “new management” from his profile. 

Writer Wesley Yang tweeted that “the purge will be brutal.” 

Commentators previously enthusiastic about the deal have latched on to Musk’s dubious public reason for terminating the deal: accusing Twitter of misrepresenting the presence of bots on the platform. 

Some are still holding out hope that Musk’s filing with the SEC is a strategic ploy to tank Twitter’s stance (Chairman Bret Taylor took to the platform to confirm the company is looking to force the sale via legal means) and discount the purchase price.

Gun reform: These states are the most dependent on the firearms industry

Luke Carberry Mogan

Sat, July 9, 2022 

As lawmakers enact new gun reforms in the wake of recent mass shootings, one factor shaping the political debate is how reliant states are on gun culture.

WalletHub ranked all 50 states by how dependent they are on the gun industry. The study compared states on the size of their firearms industry in terms of jobs and sales, the prevalence of gun culture, and gun-related political contributions.

The most dependent state on the gun industry was Idaho, followed by Wyoming and Kentucky.

While other states like California are among the largest producers overall in the gun industry, National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) data shows that Idaho led on a per capita basis with nearly 7,000 jobs, $435 million in wages, and almost $1.6 billion in gun-related economic output in 2021.

"Rural states are more dependent on the gun industry, with no exception," WalletHub Analyst Jill Gonzales told Yahoo Finance. "In terms of gun politics, northern states like Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas have the highest gun rights contributions to congressional members and no gun control contributions."

New York, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Rhode Island were the least dependent on the gun industry, the analysis found. And although WalletHub did not factor political alignment into their analysis, Gonzales noted that "what is clear is that Blue states are least dependent overall on the gun industry."

Republican-leaning states, meanwhile, were far more likely to have a robust gun industry. In fact, the top 20 states in the study voted Republican in the 2020 election.

Gonzales stressed that while the number of mass shooting events fits into a broader trend of higher firearm-related fatalities and injuries, the relationship between the gun industry and mass shootings isn't straightforward.

"There is no direct correlation between the gun ownership rate or the number of NICS background checks and the prevalence of mass shootings,” Gonzales explained. “For example, New Jersey has the lowest gun ownership rate and one of the smallest numbers of NICS background checks but ranks in the top 20 states with the most mass shootings, while West Virginia has the third-highest gun ownership rate and one of the lowest number of mass shootings.”

People look at semi-automatic guns at the Kalashnikov booth inside of the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center, on May 27, 2022, in Houston, Texas. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP) (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

In any case, the gun industry in the United States is an anomaly compared to other nations. Overall, the U.S. has an estimated 393.3 million firearms — an average of 120.5 guns per 100 residents.

The firearms industry has also continued to grow over the past decade. According to National Shooting Sports Foundation's (NSSF) 2022 economic impact report, the industry created 375,000 U.S. jobs, $21 billion in wages, and over $70 billion in economic output since 2008.

Gun politics

Political polarization has made it difficult for gun reform laws to be passed, though President Biden signed a $13 billion gun safety bill into law on June 25 after a spate of mass shootings.

The bipartisan legislation, led by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), funds expanded background checks and safety procedures, particularly for prospective gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21. It also implements more sophisticated checks using mental health records.

The politics remain: Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and North Dakota tied for the top spot regarding gun politics, a metric WalletHub used to evaluate the financial relationship between state elected officials and gun rights lobbyists.

According to political watchdog OpenSecrets, gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America, and the National Association for Gun Rights spent a total of $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 — a record amount that outspent gun control advocates by five times.

President Joe Biden signs into law S. 2938, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

In 2021, gun groups in Texas spent the most of any state, according to OpenSecrets data, with $963,000 in lobbying expenditures for gun rights. The nonprofit also found that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who opposed the recent gun safety bill, has received the most campaign contributions throughout his career.

And while the recent gun safety law found some consensus among politicians, the complicated issue is far from resolved in the wake of yet another mass shooting that took place in Highland Park, Illinois, over the Fourth of July weekend.

"Different states have different versions of similar laws (extreme risk protection orders — ERPO) and some have none," University of Michigan Professor Marc Zimmerman told Yahoo Finance. "What we need is to study which existing laws are effective. We also need research on how laws are implemented and how that might affect their effectiveness."

Gun safety research has been underfunded in recent decades, though there are some emerging trends.

For instance, "background checks may not eliminate unlawfully gained firearms, but they may eliminate impulsive behaviors that could be detected with some time to look into the individual purchasing the firearm," said Zimmerman, who is also the co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention (IFIP) at the University of Michigan. "So they are part of the solution, but they are not the only thing we can do to address the firearm injury epidemic."

A child holds a firearm on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

Another aspect that the bipartisan gun law aims to address is preventing those with mental health concerns from accessing firearms.

"We need to recognize that for younger individuals (those under 25), the brain is not fully developed so they may not make decisions like adults and may be more impulsive," Zimmerman said. "Mix that with fewer conflict management skills and lower-level conflicts (physical fighting) can escalate into retaliation with firearms."

Zimmerman stressed that Americans "own guns and gun ownership is not going away," highlighting that the majority of gun owners are responsible when handling personal firearms.

"Yet these deaths and injuries are preventable, and it is especially concerning when one person can cause so much death and injury from a single incident," he said. "We have to get away from the politicizing of this issue and just roll up our sleeves and do what we need to do to help prevent these incidents from happening."