As Slate's Emily Bazelon points out, the people actually in charge of making sure we have a less violent society — cops, prosecutors — hate these laws. "It's an abomination," former Broward County prosecutor David Frankel the Orlando Sun Sentinel. "The ultimate intent might be good, but in practice, people take the opportunity to shoot first and say later they had a justification. It almost gives them a free pass to shoot." That statement was made after a man shot an unarmed homeless man several at an ice cream store, but before Martin's death. In 2012 we've seen an accelerated repetition of a familiar American cycle: a mass shooting, public outcry, political inaction, followed by a historic victory for the gun lobby.

February 26: Trayvon Martin is shot to death, and his shooter is initially not arrested as he's covered by Florida's Stand Your Ground law.

July 20: 12 people are killed in the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, and 58 are injured.

September 22: In Kalispell, Montana, Brice Harper shoots and kills Dan Fredenberg, who entered Harper's garage unarmed and had not started a violent confrontation. Harper was having an affair with Fredenberg's wife.

October 9: Flathead County prosecutor Ed Corrigan refuses to indict Harper because Harper is protected by Montana's expanded castle doctrine law. The law allows you to kill people just to keep them from entering your house. The state has the burden to prove your use of force wasn't justified.

October 20: Saturday Night Live accurately portrays the essence of President Obama and Mitt Romney's response to a debate question about whether they would do something to control gun violence. "Nothing." "I would also do nothing."

December 11: The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down Illinois's ban on carrying concealed weapons in Moore v. Madigan. Illinois was the last state with such a ban.

December 13: "Concealed weapons could be allowed in 'gun-free zones' under bill headed to Michigan Gov. Snyder," Michigan Live reports.

While the NRA wins court fights, laws allowing more guns in more public places continue to spread, often for reasons that defy logic. For example, take the reasoning offered by Alabama state Sen. Roger Bedford, a Democrat, when explaining to Bloomberg earlier this week why he introduced a bill that would allow people to keep their guns in their cars in the workplace parking lot. "This provides safety and protection for workers who oftentimes travel 20 to 50 miles to their jobs," Bedford said. What does this mean? If there's a workplace shooting, people need to be able to have their guns in the parking lot to turn the place into a true shootout? Or does he just mean that maybe people need to be able to shoot to kill while driving down the highway on the way to work?

The fear of the NRA is so engrained in American politics that the group doesn't actually have to be successful in punishing gun control advocates anymore. The Sunlight Foundation reports that the NRA's political arm earned just a 0.83 percent return on investment in its election spending. Of the $10,942,533 the NRA spent in the 2012 election, less than 1 percent of the races ended in the NRA's desired result. So, for example, only 6 candidates it opposed actually lost. (The NRA disputes this analysis, arguing that money spent backing a sure winner should not be considered a smarter investment than money spent on a close race. It's still powerful on the local level — Bloomberg explains it helped defeat Tennessee Republican state House caucus leader Debra Maggart, who opposed a guns-in-the-parking-lot law.)