Every day 88 people are shot and killed in this country, and yet our government offers nothing but a “moment of silence” in Congress for the victims. As one elected official puts it: “We stand up. We sit down. Then we take no action at all.”

Here are four things you need to know about the gun debate to understand why nothing changes.

The NRA is the funded by gun manufacturers.

Gun companies have given at least $20 million to the NRA. Beretta and its subsidiaries alone gave the NRA at least $2.2 million. And in 2013, Beretta CEO Cav. Ugo Gussalli Beretta personally gave $250,000 to the NRA in 2013.

O.F. Mossberg and Sons markets the 500 JIC Patriot 6-Shot, which comes with an NRA logo emblazoned on the port side, an NRA Membership form, and a promise that a portion of sales will go to fund NRA programs.

Remington Arms Co., Inc. donated over $100,000 to the NRA in 2015, while Arsenal, Inc. reached the so-called “Alexander Hamilton” membership level in 2013 after donating at least $100,000 to the NRA.

2. Crime pays.

In 2015, Michael Fifer, CEO of Sturm, Ruger & Co. made $1,983,063 — $663.90 for each of the 2,987 people shot in Chicago that year.

Chicago is often held up as how gun laws don’t work, but the reality is, it’s an example of why we need national laws. An illegal gun is seized by police every 72 minutes in Chicago. In fact, 59 percent of students in Chicago — sixth through twelfth grade — know where to get a gun within 24 hours.

Nearly 80 percent of guns found at crime scenes in Chicago were trafficked into the city. One out every five guns seized came from Indiana, where gun shows are only a 30-minute drive away. One in every six guns found at city crime scenes came from three local stores just outside Chicago, each generating millions of dollars in sales each year.

3. We let gun manufacturers off the hook.

Gun manufacturers weren’t granted unprecedented immunity from legal liability out of the kindness of lawmakers’ hearts. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act exists because the gun industry paid the NRA to secure them protections that no other industry gets through a piece of legislation that NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called “the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in twenty years.”

Laughably, LaPierre defended the legislation claiming that gun manufacturers “don’t have deep pockets.” Yet, in 2012 Colt made $213.3 million in sales. In 2014, Smith & Wesson made $626.6 million, while Sturm, Ruger & Co. made $544.4 million. That same year, the NRA itself reported over $310 million in revenue.

Those deep pockets extend to the industry’s CEOS and the NRA’s top executives. LaPierre himself earned nearly $1 million in 2014. And while he’d have us believe that the industry doesn’t have deep enough pockets to take the same level responsibility as other industries, Glock founder Gaston Glock managed to pinch enough pennies together to purchase $45 million on a private jet in 2011, and the world’s most expensive horse valued at $15 million in 2014.

Meanwhile, Dr. Franco Gussalli Beretta, the gun company’s managing director, once told Forbes magazine’s “How to Spend It” column that the last thing he bought and loved was a Porsche that costs over $100,000 American dollars and that he was then looking into buying a boat.

4. We let the NRA scare and bully us.

In 2014, the NRA dumped $56.6 million into advertising and promotion to scare politicians into believing that votes for common-sense laws that would, for example, require firearms be locked away, or even just out of reach of children, are career killers.

In case those politicians didn’t get the message clearly enough, that same year the NRA spent (or at least admitted to spending) approximately $1.1 million on lobbying, $5.7 million on political expenditures and another $23 million on unspecified “legislative programs.” The actual amount the NRA spends to influence legislation is almost impossible to pin down. Between 2008–2014, the NRA failed to disclose over $58 million in political spending to the IRS.