Where guns are valued more than lives - the USA

There's a very disturbing figure that has emerged from the USA in the last day or so.  It's the figure of  730.  It's the number of people who have been shot and killed in the country since the horrific events in Uvalde, Texas on May the 24th, that saw 19 children and two adults die at the hands of a maniac gunman.

Since that date there have been 34 mass shootings in the USA.  It is considered a mass shooting where there are more than four victims killed or injured.  One singular shooting was over a gambling debt.  In another a young man in his twenties shot his father.  Since the events at Robb Elementary School a further 23 children have died in gun incidents.

I'm not sure what this says about the American Government at the moment.  While they hum and haw about what should be done, people are being killed literally all over the country by guns.  Where is appears to be simpler just to shoot someone rather than solve a dispute.  Where the life of the victims and their families are changed forever.  Not only the victim though, there is the life of the families of the shooters.  Their lives change forever.  

Lives seem to matter a lot less than guns at the moment.  The pro-gun lobby viciously defending the killing machines, defending the right to have one.  The old adage that guns don't kill people, people do.  That's nonsense of course.  A gun needs a person to pull the trigger, that's true.  However, if you take the gun out of that persons hand then they won't be able to kill with it.  The gun is the machine that will end the life.

I completely understand why American's are reluctant give up their right to own a gun, to be able protect yourself.  Particularly living in extremely rural environments.  So, the politicians and the people of the USA, as a whole, need to work out how to make it safer.  It's not correct that when you come of age you can simply go and buy one as if you were purchasing your first alcoholic drink upon being old enough.  Buying a gun in the USA has to be more tightly regulated with a view to bringing the purchase of them right down.  

Otherwise, what it looks like at the moment, is that the USA is a country that values guns over lives, and sadder still, over the lives of innocent children.  If a stark reminder is needed then 19 children died on May 24th and since then 23 more.  That's FORTY-TWO children shot and killed in the USA in sixteen days.