These arguments have worked so far because the streets were not yet running sufficiently red with the blood of innocent civilians. And it has seemed as though each successive mass-shooting tragedy would turn the tide from ideology to saving actual innocent lives. Not yet, not yet. But someday.

Arguments in favor of the current extreme reading of the Second Amendment will only go so far. Too far for sure, as they were still going strong yesterday, but neither legalistic hairsplitting nor thoughts and prayers bring back the dead, nor do they protect the next victims, and people are going to start calculating whether those next victims will be them or their children.

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The absolutely senseless murder of children, in a school or in a church, of young people listening to music at a concert, of shoppers at a Walmart, is a truth more potent than all the sophistry about how mass murderers somehow fit under the umbrella of a well-organized militia.

It doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take any persuasion at all to make people realize that a nation awash in weaponry is going to lead to recurring tragedy, especially when they see it happening repeatedly with their own eyes.