Shots missed
Among various takeaways from Tuesday’s primary election, a most gratifying one is this: Republican candidates for Missouri governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general whose TV commercials most prominently glorified their attachments to guns lost.
You might have assumed that with Donald Trump being the world’s best-known recent gun-violence survivor, savvy Republicans would have downplayed their affinity for guns. Nope.
In the future, maybe ambitious Missouri office-seekers should write TV scripts free of firearms. After all, Missouri has the nation’s fifth highest gun death rate, according to a study by the Violence Policy Center using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Missouri also routinely ranks near the bottom in the annual list of states with strong gun laws, as evaluated by the nonprofit Giffords Law Center.
Candidates who want to win elections next time might want to holster those weapons. Even better, store them safely with gun locks.