It’s never the guns.

In the wake of too-common, too-familiar massacres like the one at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school this week, Republicans continue to twist themselves into pretzels trying to find something other than the ready access to deadly firearms to blame for the latest carnage. Perhaps it was “mental health,” as Texas Governor Greg Abbott suggested in a press conference Wednesday, though he gave no indication at the time that shooter Salvador Ramos had any kind of mental illness. Maybe the school wasn’t sufficiently “hardened,” as Texas Senator Ted Cruz lamented outside the school where 19 kids and two teachers were gunned down Tuesday. Or maybe it’s even that America does not currently have the “department that can look at young men, that looks at women, that’s looking at social media” that Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker proposed Thursday as an alternative to gun reforms that would “take away your rights.”

Most Americans overwhelmingly support common sense gun reforms like universal background checks. But the stubborn opposition to such measures among Republican lawmakers makes more sense when you consider it from their perspective: Their political careers are being bankrolled, through direct donations and indirect contributions like attack ads against opponents, by the very industry their constituents want them to do more to regulate.

While the National Rifle Association has been weakened in recent years by scandal and financial strife, it and other pro-gun organizations remain a powerful force in GOP politics: According to Open Secrets, extreme gun groups like the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Association spent record money last year, throwing nearly $15 million at politicians and other lobbying efforts in 2021; in the first three months of this year, they spent two million dollars. Cruz has been the biggest beneficiary in the ten years he’s been in the Senate, hauling in more cash from gun groups since he was elected in 2012 than any other politician, per Open Secrets.

“Ted Cruz is just a slave to the gun lobby,” Texas Democrat Joaquin Castro said this week.

He’s not alone, of course; according to data compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in 2019, sixteen sitting GOP senators have accepted at least a million dollars in donations from the NRA over the course of their careers. Among them: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose filibuster has long stood in the way of common sense reforms. Utah Senator Mitt Romney received the most, according to Brady, with $13,647,676 as of 2019 — nearly double that of the next senator on the list, Richard Burr of North Carolina. But as the Salt Lake Tribune reported Wednesday, that eye-popping haul came during his 2012 presidential campaign to unseat Barack Obama; Romney has not appeared to receive any NRA money for his 2018 Senate campaign or his 2024 reelection campaign. “No one owns Sen. Romney’s vote, as evidenced by his record of independence in the Senate,” Romney spokesperson Arielle Mueller told the outlet.

He’ll have a chance to display that “independence” soon; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that he will hold a vote on gun control legislation next month when lawmakers return from their Memorial Day recess. Democrats would need ten GOP votes to get something done, and Romney in the wake of Uvalde left the door open to being one of them: “I offer prayer and condolence but know that it is grossly inadequate,” he wrote after the Robb Elementary shooting. “We must find answers.”

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who issued an impassioned plea for his colleagues to do something Tuesday after the shooting, is leading the effort to find those bipartisan answers. He has expressed hope that something could change, but has also acknowledged that there is but a “narrow path” for such legislation to move forward. “I think the chances are, you know, well less than 50-50 that we will find that compromise,” he told NPR on Wednesday. That may even be overstating it. On Thursday, Republicans blocked an anti-domestic terror bill, which House Democrats approved after the recent racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket, in a partyline vote. The bill “just doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Texas Senator John Cornyn, a top recipient of gun lobby dollars, said earlier this week, per the Washington Post.

If Thursday’s vote is a bellwether, that would seem to suggest that any attempts next month to expand background checks, implement red flag law, or ban military-grade weapons that have left a trail of dead from Uvalde to Newtown could be doomed to meet the same fate as other no-brainer measures the gun lobby has undercut, from funding for gun violence research to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed director since 2015. Cruz and other Republicans justify their obstruction by deflecting to other causes — like mental health, which they also do little to address — and insisting that gun control measures wouldn’t work anyway. “It’s not effective,” Cruz told reporters later Wednesday. “It doesn’t prevent crime.”

But that’s just not true. Obviously, there is no law that would “prevent” violent crime. But background checks, assault weapons restrictions, and other measures do, in fact, curb gun crime. That’s why they enjoy broad support among the American public — just not the gun lobby. “The problem in the Senate is simple,” Schumer said Wednesday. “Too many members on the other side of the aisle are disconnected from the suffering of the American people. Too many members on that side care more about the NRA than they do about families who grieve victims of gun violence.”

As if to prove Schumer’s point, Cruz, Abbott, and Donald Trump are still scheduled to speak at this weekend’s NRA convention — in Houston, less than 300 miles from Uvalde.