A Capitalism-Based Strategy to End Gun Violence and Price Gouging

Due to ineffective campaign finance laws, most U.S. politicians are owned by massive corporations that include retailers and gun manufacturers—corporations that are making fat profits by treating American consumers like cash cows. These corporations pay to get politicians favorable to them re-elected. To force passage of national gun control legislation and put an end to price gouging, we as people who are suffering must implement a capitalism-based strategy—speak in the language that corporations understand. The answer is simple and easy to do, if we have the self-determination and courage to do it.

Have you asked yourself, when driving to a shopping mall or big box store, why you have chosen to put your life in danger – will there be a mass shooting? When you arrive, life at risk, you will be price gouged by a retailer using you as a consumer cash cow to fatten its profit.

What do you and your family really need to live a good life on a day-to-day basis? Food, water, supplies to keep your home clean, entertainment, gas to get to work/run errands? Could you commit to buying only these items? When you buy them, could you avoid shopping malls, big box stores and other retail establishments where your life could be at risk? Could you do this for one year, including holidays, birthdays, special occasions, with self-determination and resolve? You’ve already done this successfully. During Covid shopping malls and stores were closed. What did you miss most? Probably you missed the separation from friends and family.

What would happen if American consumers stopped shopping at malls and major retailers?

Let’s start with a message to retailers from the Law of Cause and Effect. The main reason we are staying away from your store is that we don’t feel safe there. The random, unpredictable shooting and killing of innocent people who were shopping is an epidemic in the United States. So, retailers and manufacturers, until you publicly and effectively take a strong stand that forces the U.S. Congress you own (through campaign finance) to pass national gun control legislation, fewer and fewer customers will be buying your products. It isn’t worth risking our lives to buy your goods, most of which we really don’t need anyway. The cash cows will be staying in the barn for the foreseeable future.

Let’s look at supply and demand and price gouging. When shopping malls, big box stores and other retail outlets find themselves sitting on huge quantities of merchandise for which there is no demand—because we as consumers have stopped buying their overpriced goods—the Law of Supply and Demand says that retail prices will drop like a deflated balloon. An excellent article by Robert Reich in the May 12, 2023 Guardian put it succinctly: “…what’s causing inflation? Corporations with enough monopoly power to raise their prices and fatten their profits…” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/12/economy-inflation-corporations-raise-consumer-prices-democrats)

Until American consumers—all of us, of every race, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status—stand up and say “No more!”, the shooting, killing and price gouging will continue, as the joke goes, until our attitude improves. Politicians look out for their own interests. My fellow Americans, it’s time we did the same. Vote with your feet. Send the message every corporation understands.