Yeah, that's probably the problem

The Associated Press has my sympathy for its current First Amendment problems, but that hardly gets them off the hook for the gratuitous – and stupid – editorializing wedged into the fifth paragraph of this report on the Mothers Day Parade shoot-up in New Orleans last weekend:

The mass shooting showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies the city's festive image.

Let's skip down ten more paragraphs to this tidbit about a suspect in the shooting:

Police said in a news release Scott has previously been arrested for illegal carrying of a weapon, illegal possession of a stolen firearm, resisting an officer, contraband to jail, illegal carrying of a weapon while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of heroin.

This guy has all those weapons-related charges, still gets his hands on a gun, and AP reporter Chevel Johnson supposes this tells us something about the persistent culture of violence in New Orleans, as opposed to – oh, let's say – a persistent culture of gun violence throughout America in which weapons manufacturers, through their lobbying front the NRA, and through them to the lease-to-own legislators who are doing their very best to prevent things like background checks on gun sales.

True, Scott may very well have gotten all these guns in ways that would have end-run any background check system, but consider that those guns had to get into circulation somehow, and any meaningful legislative checks on that problem are being attacked and dismantled at a much, much faster rate than new ones can possibly be enacted.

There's your culture of violence, Bucko.