Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In the wake of yet another deadly mass shooting in the United States, this time in Nashville, Tennessee, local legislators in the state have been facing mounting pressure to implement gun reforms. A group of three legislators from the Democratic Party led a protest in favor of tighter gun restrictions on April 6 and, afterward, faced expulsion from the local State House by a GOP supermajority for violations of conduct and decorum. 

Two of those legislators were expelled on April 7, and the distinguishing factor was that both of them are black. As a CBS news report mentions, "Only two other house members have ever been booted from the Tennessee chamber since the Civil War." Forgetting the issue of gun control for the moment, this demonstrates that the post-Civil War, Reconstruction norms of the U.S. South in regard to race are crumbling. 

In fact, the targeting of these two black legislators is a prime example of this – and it reflects a serious dilemma for the federal government.

At the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, racial tensions were so bad that the U.S. army occupied the entirety of the former Confederate States and was repeatedly called upon for political purposes, primarily to quell terrorist plots, by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and defend black people from racially-motivated violence. This remained a policy of the federal government for about the next 12 years. U.S. troops were also called upon in Arkansas in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower to implement the Supreme Court's decision on school desegregation.

The entire policy is not dissimilar from the denazification of Germany and other parts of former Nazi-held territory in Europe that took place after the conclusion of World War II. With the Republican Party once again politically targeting black people, such as these black legislators, will this escalate to the point of demanding a response from the U.S. army once again? This situation deserves careful observation. 

What is clear from this situation, however, is that the GOP is willing to toss the entire post-war decorum out of the window just to defend the weapons industry and act in favor of the powerful gun lobby. And this stance is seriously upsetting the lives of average, everyday Americans, who now can't even feel safe living their ordinary lives and especially attending large public events. With the continuing and increasing number of mass shootings and gun deaths, nowhere is apparently safe.

Before the Christmas holiday in 2022, it was reported that the country's life expectancy had dropped starkly for a second year in a row to 76 years, placing it lower than in countries like Cuba or Lebanon. While most countries saw a drop in life expectancy due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, most also saw a rebound as vaccines and other therapeutic treatments came onto the market. Not so for the United States.

This is owed to a few factors, but one of them relevant to this piece is guns. Pediatric mortality, according to a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found rising mortality rates among U.S. children and adolescents. It notes that this issue goes far beyond poor eating habits or other issues associated with the U.S. childhood obesity epidemic. It found that "American children are less likely to live to age five than children in other high-income countries."

So we can see that premature deaths by children and adolescents are a major factor in the country's diminishing life expectancy. One of the primary drivers of this is the fact that, since 2020, gunfire has been the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the U.S., surpassing even car crashes, which had previously topped the list. In fact, almost 20 percent of all deaths by Americans aged one to 18 who died in the past three years were related to guns. 

When compared to other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. is the only country where guns are the leading cause of death for people in this age bracket – no other nation even has it in the top four. This is a harrowing statistic that shows just how much guns are impacting the quality of life for Americans, especially children and adolescents. 

The GOP, acting hand-in-glove with weapons manufacturers, is willing to destroy the entire post-war political consensus of the United States, potentially triggering another civil war. They're also allowing average Americans – including a huge swath of children and adolescents – to be gunned down and significantly reduce the country's quality of life. Nothing can justify such extreme, callous disregard for peace and human life – and the Republican Party should be ashamed of itself. 

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