Christopher Harper-Mercer’s massacre at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College is just one more installment in an ongoing American tragedy. This most recent event will likely have the same (non) resolution as the events that preceded it. Despite the fact that the majority of the American people want reasonable and sensible gun control policies enacted, nothing will be done, because the National Rifle Association and its lobbyists have American democracy in a chokehold.

The latest gun massacre is a case study in how America is exceptional in all the wrong ways