Columbine Could Have Been a Turning Point in Tackling America's Gun Violence. It wasn't.

Twenty-five years later, the gun industry’s greed and elected leaders’ cowardice continue to prevail, the head of the National Urban League writes.

By Marc Morial, Chicago Sun Times

As the mayor of a city devastated by the unchecked greed of the firearm industry, I filed the first-of-its-kind lawsuit against irresponsible gun companies and their powerful lobbyists in 1998. At the time, I said the gun industry’s “day of atonement” had arrived.

Six months later, the massacre of a dozen students and a teacher at Columbine High School galvanized support for common-sense gun safety measures. I was even more convinced that the will of a horrified nation would triumph over the greed of an industry and the cowardice of the lawmakers it held in its thrall.

I could not have imagined that 25 years later, with nearly 900,000 more American lives lost to gun violence, greed and cowardice still would prevail.

At that summer’s meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the bipartisan Gun Violence Task Force approved a letter to then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) calling for raising the minimum age for purchasing and possessing a handgun from 18 to 21, requiring background checks at gun shows, and limiting gun purchases to one a month per individual, and other common-sense measures.

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