Who’s Really Pulling the Trigger: The Shooter, or the Predator Lobby?

When politicians hand the gun industry a liability shield, they’re not “protecting freedom,”they’re protecting a business model built on body counts…

America’s 465th mass shooting in 2025, this one at Brown University in Rhode Island, should remind us all that it’s insane that the GOP passed and Bush signed into law the so-called Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2006 that largely gives immunity from liability lawsuits to the gun industry (and only the gun industry).

It’s time to end the predator-state coalition in America, of which this is just one glaring example.

Ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that “money is free speech” protected by the First Amendment and “corporations are persons” protected by the entire Bill of Rights, pretty much every industry in America has poured cash into politicians’ and judges’ pockets to be able to freely rip us off. Or, in the case of the gun industry, kill our children.

Even though a clear majority of Americans want stronger gun laws, our politicians have colluded with the gun industry to give us the exact opposite as I detail in The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment.

But it’s not just the gun industry.

When greedy banksters crashed our economy in 2008, George W. Bush made sure not a single one went to prison, in stark contrast to the S&L scandal/crash in the 1980s: between 1988 and 1992 the Department of Justice sent 1,706 banksters to prison and obtained 2,603 guilty verdicts for fraud in financial institutions.

In 2008, however, after Bush and his cronies cashed their “contribution” checks, hundreds of banksters walked away with million- and even billion-dollar bonuses. Steve Mnuchin, who allegedly threw over 30,000 people out of their homes with robo-signed documents, was even appointed Treasury Secretary by Donald Trump and later given a billion dollars by the Saudis to invest.

Are you regularly hearing about these horrors on social media? Probably not, because prior to 1996, social media companies (then it was mostly CompuServe and AOL) had to hire people like me and Nigel Peacock to monitor their forums, make sure people followed the rules and told the truth. Nobody was the victim of online predators, and the company didn’t run secret algorithms to push rightwing memes at you and shadow-ban progressive content.

That year, however, after generous contributions to both parties, Congress passed a bill that gave Zuck and his buddies almost complete immunity from liability, which is why social media is now so dangerously toxic that Australia just banned it for kids.

Similarly, every other democracy in the world does your taxes for you and then lets you know their math so you can check it. In several European countries it’s so simple it’s basically a postcard; you only respond if you think they’re in error. The US is the only developed country on Earth where there’s a multi-billion-dollar industry preparing people’s tax returns for them.

For example, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland returns are pre-filled and can be approved via text message or an online portal in minutes. In Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and France tax forms are similarly filled out in advance by the government; you just sign and mail them back. And in Estonia, widely seen as a digital government pioneer, filing taxes takes minutes and is done with a simple online form that a fifth grader could complete.

Here in the US, Democrats thought this was a fine idea — it would save time and money for both taxpayers and the IRS — and so Biden rolled out a program where people with few deductions could simply file their taxes online for free.

Republicans, however, being on the take from the billion-dollar tax preparation industry, objected; they didn’t want the financial gravy train to stop because that would mean less of the money charged us for tax prep would end up in their campaign coffers, not to mention the fancy vacations, meals, and other lobbying benefits they can get.

So, the Trump administration announced — after tax prep company Intuit “donated” $1 million to Trump’s “inaugural” slush fund — that they’re killing off the free filing option; going forward, pretty much everybody must either learn enough tax law to deal with the IRS themselves or pay a tax preparation company.

And then there’s the health insurance industry, a giant blood-sucking tick attached to our collective backs that made $74 billion in profits (in addition to the billions paid to its most senior executives) last year by denying us payments for doctors’ visits, tests, procedures, surgeries, and even organ transplants.

Most Americans have no idea that the United States is quite literally the only country in the developed world that doesn’t define healthcare as an absolute right for all of its citizens and thus provide it at low or no cost.

That’s it. We’re the only one left. We’re the only country in the entire developed world where somebody getting sick can leave a family bankrupt, destitute, and homeless.

A half-million American families are wiped out every year so completely that they lose everything and must declare bankruptcy just because somebody got sick. The number of health-expense-related bankruptcies in all the other developed countries in the world combined is zero.

Yet the United States spends more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of GDP. Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden and Japan all average around 11%, and Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia all come in between 9.3% and 10.5%.

Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22% of all taxable payroll (and don’t even cover all working people), whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10% and would cover every man, woman, and child in America. And don’t get me started on the Medicare Advantage scam the Bush administration created that’s routinely ripping off seniors and destroying actual Medicare.

And if disease doesn’t get us, hunger might. One-in-five American children live in “food insecure” households and frequently go to bed hungry at a time Trump and Republicans are cutting SNAP and WIC benefits and grants to food banks.

The amount of money that America’s richest four billionaires (Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg) added to their money bins since 2020 because of the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts is over $300 billion: the cost to entirely end child poverty in America is an estimated $25 billion.

And, because of the body and brain damage hunger and malnutrition are doing to one-in-five American children, child hunger in the US is costing our society an estimated $167.5 billion a year in lost opportunity and productivity.

So, why do we avoid spending $25 billion to solve a $167.5 billion problem? Because of the predator-state coalition, which was legalized and enabled by five corrupt on-the-take Republicans on the US Supreme Court.

The predators don’t want you to know this stuff, of course, which is why they’ve bought up or started over 1500 radio stations, hundreds of TV stations, multiple TV networks, multiple major and local newspapers, and thousands of websites to bathe us in a continuous slurry of rightwing bullshit and pro-industry talking points.

And then there are the monopolies that Reagan legalized in 1983 and the Bush and Trump administrations have encouraged. Before that, we had competition within industries, and most malls and downtowns were filled with locally-owned businesses and stores.

Grocery stores, airlines, banks, social media, retail stores, gas stations, car manufacturers, insurance companies, internet providers (ISPs), computer companies, phone companies, hospital chains: the list goes on and on.

All — because of their monopoly or oligopoly status — cost the average American family an average of over $5000 a year that is not paid by the citizens of any other developed country in the world because the rest of the world won’t tolerate this kind of predatory, monopolistic behavior.

Trump has even managed to turn immigration into a predatory scheme, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from social programs to a masked, secret police force and Republican-aligned private prison contractors, as he gleefully inflicts brutality on dark-skinned immigrants and American citizens alike.

It’s time to roll back the predatory state, and it’d make a hell of a campaign slogan for Democrats running next November and in 2028. End Corporate Personhood and the legal bribery of politicians and judges.

Louise’s Daily Song: “Who’s Really Pulling the Trigger?”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink is now available in bookstores nationwide.
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