The pro-gun side has blocked gun violence research since the results of that research " may be used to advocate or promote gun control". Let's not forget all the rest of the disinformation put out by the "pro-gun side".
On the other hand, Comics have been subversive and have had an impact on gun laws. For example, the Batman Comic: Seduction of the Gun was supposed to have shamed the Virginia Legislature into adopting the one gun a month bill. The issue had been a created since a DC Comics executive's son was shot to death at a New York City pay phone.
Anyway, will something like a comic book character such as Archie, who is the symbol of American innocence, being shot be the wake up call which brings the debate about guns in American society to a crashing reality? Archie is the 1950s vision of the US which the right wants to somehow "bring back", yet he has fallen victim to their sick politics and distorted nostalgia. The only people who carried guns in the 1950s were cops or criminals with very few people feeling the "need" to carry. It was not seen as some sort of symbolic gesture that it has become in recent years.
Archie will die. Archie will die by someone shooting him.
America's innocence will die with him.
Unlike other acts of gun violence, this one is fictional and we know about it in advance. Let the furore commence.
The bottom line is that people have been using every trick in the book to not address this problem: from claiming that the Second Amendment somehow had nothing to do with a "well-regulated militia" to providing fake data to somehow prove that guns benefit society.
Maybe this will shock them into sense.