In the wake of the 49 murders at Orlando’s gay nightclub Pulse, there’s been a conversation on gun control in this country, or the lack of it.
This 13-year-old tried to buy porn, lottery tickets, and a gun. Guess which one he got.
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
The ease of getting a gun in America is, at this point, terrifyingly entertaining.
In the wake of Orlando’s shooting massacre, a columnist in Philadelphia purchased an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, the gun used in some of America’s deadliest mass shootings. She was able to buy it in seven minutes. Another writer, in Vermont, purchased the same gun model from a man in a Five Guys parking lot. HuffPo bought one in Orlando, the site of the mass shooting, in a little over 38 minutes. According to Fox Business, AR-15s are flying off the shelves. (The gun used in the Orlando shooting was a Sig Sauer MCX, which is similar to the AR-15.)
But the best summation of the sad hilarity of this all might go to a segment from HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. In 2014, the show outfitted a 13-year-old boy with a hidden camera and had him try to buy things he wasn’t allowed to.
It was easier for a 13-year-old boy from Virginia to purchase a gun, a .22 caliber rifle, from a private seller at a gun show than it was for him to buy porn, cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets. (According to Virginia State Police, you must be 18 years of age to purchase a rifle or shotgun from a licensed firearms dealer.)
It’s so real and shocking that it’s almost feels like satire or parody.
On Wednesday, members of the Senate, predominantly Democrats, held a 15-hour filibuster to change the way we sell guns in this country. That filibuster has prompted a vote.
