I think this speaks for itself.

x Tell you lawmakers to STOP a push to fund #guncontrol "research"! #2A pic.twitter.com/oFoVO4mnP3 — NRA (@NRA) December 11, 2015

Hmm. You know, it’s theoretically possible that doing gun “research” would show that everybody should have more guns. It’s unlikely, perhaps, but still possible that a double-blind study would prove that toddlers were 50 percent less likely to die in gun-related accidents if we duct taped loaded guns to their arms to defend themselves from the other children in the house. Or prove that by golly, the way to stop mass shootings is indeed to arm everyone, and ask everyone to shoot everyone if they see anyone shooting anyone.

Or, what the hell, we might come up with simple ways to keep “dropped” guns from going off, or techniques even the stupidest parents can use to keep their guns away from their children, or find a rock-solid way of judging which heavily armed Americans were irresponsible lunatics one burnt Denny’s entree away from a murder spree and which were the heavily armed Americans we could count on to protect us all when it happened. Maybe having random Home Depot patrons shooting at alleged shoplifters in a crowded parking lot is making us all a lot safer than we think.

But no, the NRA and pro-gun lawmakers are pretty sure that any “research” into guns at all will go down badly for them.

My own theory, of course, is that most of the people who consider their right to carry loaded weapons so sacrosanct as to trump all others know full well that they themselves are nutcases who shouldn’t be trusted with them. The Bundy ranch crowd, Wayne LaPierre and his sweaty conspiracy theories about minorities coming to knockout game him, and anyone, anywhere who thinks they need a gun in case The Gubbermint oppresses them; show me a person who’s more dedicated to “gun rights” than to any other cause in his life and I’ll show you someone who’s been thinking long and hard on just when and why he might have to start killing people.

That’s why we can’t have even the most sensible reforms to gun regulation. It’s because any truly “sensible” gun reform would take guns out of the hands of lunatics who fantasize about murder sprees, and lunatics who fantasize about murder sprees make up the vast majority of the public “gun rights” base.