Purposeful constructions.
This useful and illustrative New York Times article leaves out a few key points because they’re out of scope, but we are thinking creatures, capable of placing additional context.
1) There is very purposeful storytelling arrangement here in showing that Yemen, the last country in this list, has a similarly short and freewheeling process for purchasing a firearm. We’re the country with the highest rate of gun ownership per citizen; Yemen is second. We’re the country with the greatest number of mass shootings; Yemen is second.
2) The NRA has spent much of the last year indicating that their key agenda item is carry-reciprocity, the notion that your license to carry from one state should be considered valid in every other state, even if the laws in the state where you purchased your gun are significantly more relaxed than the state to which you are traveling. Because the goal is to undermine all firearms restrictions everywhere. Because in many ways they resent even the instant background check, as it represents a few extra minutes in which somebody hasn’t been spending money on a gun.
The gun debate is about competing narratives and the storytellers who wield them. Like most such contests, the stakes are quite literally life and death.
Creative Control 