Three weeks have now passed since the shooting in Las Vegas, and, unsurprisingly, talk of gun law reform has died down with no serious attempts at legal change in sight. After years of tragedy followed by little to no reform, those of us who desire change have exhausted all appeals to reason or sympathy. They all fall short of whatever impossibly high threshold has been set by corrupt lawmakers, and at this point there is no doubt they have been strong-armed by the National Rifle Association. Even corruption, though, should falter against the pity that comes with this repetitive, irrational bloodshed. At this point, I can think of only two explanations for how America’s gun laws have withstood their constant testing.

To understand the first, we can look at “Saturday Night Live’s” response to the Vegas shootings. The Oct. 7 episode began with Jason Aldean, the country musician on stage when the shootings began, singing a cover of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” both a statement about the violence and a tribute to the rock star who died the same week as the Vegas victims. Though in one respect this was a tasteful gesture, the chorus of the song is a perfect example of what is wrong with American gun rhetoric: “I won’t back down/Gonna stand my ground.” America sees itself in a winnable battle where good guys with guns have to “stand their ground” against bad guys with guns, or in the case of the man who shot Trayvon Martin, against a 17-year-old with a bag of Skittles.

America may see itself as the complicated superhero that sacrifices the lives of a few innocent people to uphold greater values of justice and freedom, but it looks more like a poor gambler with a bad addiction. It loses again and again, and yet it thinks that just maybe, if it puts more money down, if it develops and legalizes more violent weapons, it will win back everything on the next hand. The problem is that innocent lives are not in the pot to win back; they are gone. Further, this is a rigged game. We are never given the upper hand. No matter how many hands we play, no matter how many lives we bet, we will never win. We must fold.

A second possible explanation for our lawmakers’ irrationality is an effect of corruption by the NRA: Perhaps, corruption has become so ingrained that it leads politicians to benefit from effects of these shootings in a way that is almost sadistic. Of course, none of them are sitting back and taking pleasure at the deaths of thousands of Americans, but some politicians garner support from the small percentage of the population that reacts to these atrocities by saying “give me more guns so I can stand my ground.” It’s no secret that some politicians receive money from the lobbyists who consolidate those few voices into one. All that support increases precisely in times following some of the worst mass shootings, and so, while no politicians cheer gun violence, there are certainly some who benefit from its side effects.

This point becomes more clear when you think beyond publicized mass killings. Politicians respond en masse to shootings that kill middle-to-upper income, predominantly white men and women. But the sympathetic rhetoric is often missing when politicians, particularly Republicans, talk about gun violence in lower-income areas. Those discussions often focus on the “stand your ground” sentiment that rallies support for gun ownership. For example, there was President Donald Trump’s racist campaign refrain about the dangerous streets of Chicago. Has he done anything to reduce violence here since his election? It seems more likely that he wanted to anger people into buying more guns so he could sit back and watch his power consolidate from behind the secure walls of the White House.

To blame Republicans alone, though, would not be fair. The blood is also on Democratic hands, who are either equally corrupt or have sat back and let the “stand my ground” attitude prevail. It is time that we as a nation choose to back down from our unwinnable fight for “freedom” and stand our ground against the power-driven, violent inertia that has killed thousands across the country.

Calvin Anderson is a Weinberg junior and co-president of College Democrats. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.