Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum, as well as co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Nelson is a retired American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court from 1993 through 2012, having been appointed to the court by then Republican Governor Marc Racicot.
Lewiston, Maine: 18 killed, 13 injured in a rampage by a guy with an assault rifle. The shooter: a certified firearms instructor and a member of the U.S. Army Reserves. The community locked down until he’s found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Press conferences; school classes canceled; politicians falling all over each other with their thoughts and prayers--and, choreographed for the evening news, bloviating frustration and rage (at least through that news cycle).
Soon the memorials and funerals; sermons about senseless murder and the deceased being in a better place; and CNN doing spots about the victims. Grieving family members being interviewed: “And, how are you feeling, Mrs. Jones?” Really?!
So, what’s new? Sadly, not a damn thing. Just another day in paradise.
Revolted by this latest massacre, a friend called us and said: “Do you know we’ve killed more people by gun violence in the last two years in America, than civilians killed by Russia in Ukraine.”
That was hard to believe, so we promised to do some research. He was right.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights verified that as of September 12, 2023, a total of 9,614 civilians have died during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with 17,535 people injured.
But, It turns out the Russians are pikers when it comes to killing civilians. Gun Violence Archive is an independent data collection and research group unaffiliated with any advocacy organization and collected data on incidents from over 7,500 law enforcement departments, media, government and commercial sources in an effort to provide data about the results of gun violence.
According to their research, as of October 26, 2023, there have been 35,291 gun violence deaths in America year to date. Add to that the 20,200 gun violence deaths in 2022, and we have a total of 55,491 American civilians killed—about 5.8 times more than the number of civilians killed, in the same period in Ukraine, who is at war with a superpower, Russia.
In 2020 and 2021, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness. The child firearm mortality rate has doubled in the U.S. from a recent low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021.
With statistics like this, reasonable gun legislation should not be a partisan issue. Yet it is and for some reason despite the carnage support for assault weapon ban legislation is actually dropping.
How can this be?
Certainly, the Supreme Court ruling that has chosen to ignore the plain language of the 2nd Amendment in favor of broadly protecting personal gun ownership is a factor. However, at the same time the Court has left room for reasonable gun regulation as enacted in The Bipartisan Safer Communities act of 2022 that ended a nearly 30-year stalemate on any federal legislation. This legislation includes $750 million to help states implement so-called “red flag” laws to remove firearms from peoples deemed to be a danger to themselves and others. Additionally the law provided funding for mental health, and enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21.
Yet no significant weapons ban of any type has passed or is currently under serious consideration.
A major factor in the lack of progress, of course, relates to the extensive power and reach of the NRA. The NRA was formed in 1871 to promote marksmanship skills and sports shooting, but in the 1970’s a faction of the organization forced it away from sports and into opposing “gun control.” Awash in money, the NRA has one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. In the 2000s, after the assault weapons ban expired, the organization became involved in promoting the sale of assault rifle-type weapons and in 2016 spent more than $30 million on behalf of the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission data.
The strength of the NRA does not lie solely in its cash contributions, to members of presidential candidates or Congress to thwart any gun control. The NRA's strength also relies on its staunch supporters who will, at the drop of a gun-control bill, write letters to their senators and congressmen threatening them with their vote if they pass even the most moderate gun legislation. Many of these people are single issue voters, and politicians whose concern is more about getting elected than doing what should be done are rightly scared of them. Add to this the power of the gun manufacturing lobby and one can easily see why no matter how many mass killings in America nothing ever changes.
However, it is not just the NRA. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a business grade organization representing 10,000 gunmakers, dealers and other firearms firms zealously and single mindedly exerts enormous power.
Despite these powerful forces, 61% of Americans believe it is too easy to obtain a gun and 58% favor stricter gun laws and thus it is imperative that Congress act. Unfortunately, history proves that with the current makeup of Congress it is unlikely that meaningful gun legislation will be enacted.
And so once again we mourn and we weep and pray for action. If only our elected leaders would do what is right, instead of what is politically and financially expedient, these unnecessary tragedies could become less frequent.
But instead we have governors saying, as Maine’s governor recently did, “it’s time to heal and move on.” And instead of action we hear the old refrain as expressed by Mike Johnson the new speaker of the House that guns don’t kill people, hearts do.
These are words easy to say, but for the grieving families and victims, these words are hollow as they chart a nearly impossible journey.
In the end, it is up to Congress and up to us. If we do not elect leaders willing to enact reasonable, protective gun legislation then, sadly it is just going to be another day in paradise, someplace else, all over again.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.