Donald Trump — who yelled about “carnage” in big cities during his inauguration speech — has said not a word about the Kentucky shooting except to tweet his “thoughts and prayers.” (Even that, commenters noted, came nearly 24 hours after the prime minister of Canada sent his sympathies.) It is highly unlikely this lack of focus was due to weariness. “You’ve got to wonder,” Kelly said in a phone interview, whether the president would have had a more intense reaction if the news reports suggested “the shooter was of a different ethnicity.”

True that. During his government-shutdown-immigration rants, Trump kept pointing out that the man who killed eight people with a truck in Manhattan had come to the country through a visa lottery system. That happened on Oct. 31. Since that time, 73 people have been killed in mass shootings in this country. But about gun regulation we have not heard a presidential peep.

The unusual thing about that terrible Manhattan tragedy is that it was not committed with a gun. Depending on how you count them, we’ve had around 30 acts of terrorism since 9/11 that involved multiple deaths. More than half were committed by right-wing extremists (think Charleston church shooting). And virtually all of them were gun violence.

So, this is the time when we talk about gun regulation. Come on. Energize.

We are resigned to the fact that there is nothing, no matter how horrific, that will convince any politician in the thrall of the National Rifle Association to consider even the most modest gun-safety legislation. After the Las Vegas massacre, in which the murderer had purchased at least 55 weapons in the year leading up to the shooting, Kentucky’s Governor Bevin seemed to feel the most unbelievable part was the call by “political opportunists … for more gun regs.” He tweeted: “You can’t regulate evil…”