A Bernie Sanders supporter shooting bullets at congressional Republicans is a tragic absurdity ready-made for today’s hot take circus. By now, we know the script. The right will say this is proof that progressives are growing unhinged in the Donald Trump era. The left will argue for gun control, or point out the obvious truth that had a Muslim shot at Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, Trump would’ve cried terrorism.

Moments like these are never-ending Rorschach tests for whoever is consuming the news. Polarized Americans retreat to their corners and await further confirmation of their world views, burying themselves in hypotheticals. What if a Trump lover had shot at a House Democrat – would MSNBC spontaneously combust? Would the New Yorker tell America the president has blood on his hands?

No amount of shootings will convince a second amendment-loving conservative that putting restrictions on who can own a weapon will keep these shootings from happening. And no incident, no matter how much the product of a deranged individual doing what a vast majority of Americans never would, will convince both sides that this isn’t a symbol of something much greater, a reflection of the times we live in now.

It’s human nature to seek out patterns, to hunt for grand, unifying theories and theses for why events may occur, to knit them together into history. Just as some on the right force Muslim Americans to account for Isis’s indiscriminate slaughter or others on the left make all Trump supporters reckon with the madness of white supremacists, so too will Sanders backers have to answer for what someone linked to them did. This is wrong, but it will happen.

James Thomas Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old Illinois man, was angered by the election. Hodgkinson reportedly volunteered for the Sanders campaign and was openly disdainful of congressional Republicans. On Tuesday, he posted a cartoon on Facebook explaining “How does a bill work?” “That’s an easy one, Billy,” the cartoon reads. “Corporations write the bill and then bribe Congress until it becomes law.”

Lessons won’t be learned. The baseball shooting will be one more moment in the procession of the surreal that has come to define life in 21st-century America.

There will be talk of getting guns out of the hands of everyone or just guns out of the hands of the mentally ill or not getting guns out at all, keeping them there and adding to the arsenal so America can stay well-armed for whatever anarchy the most fevered minds promise is nigh.

Since turning America into Japan – a country where three separate crimes restrict holding a handgun, possessing unlicensed bullets and firing them – is virtually impossible right now, what is left to do but scream?

Mo Brooks, a Republican congressman from Alabama, was asked if the shooting changed his stance on gun control. Like most Republicans, Brooks likes guns. “As with any constitutional provision in the bill of rights, there are adverse aspects to each of those rights that we enjoy as people. And what we just saw here is one of the bad side effects of someone not exercising those rights properly,” he said.

For all the rightful outcry over limiting access to firearms, Brooks wasn’t wrong. However vague and baked in 18th-century reality, the second amendment is part of the constitution forevermore. Under the guise of first amendment protections that liberals cherish, speech can be used to psychologically and emotionally wound people.

This is not the same as firing a bullet and killing someone, and this is where the real distinction comes. But constitutional rights can’t simply be wiped away because too many maniacs abuse them.

Eventually, the shouting will die down and Washington will move on with the business of trying and failing to functionally manage a nation. Chris Collins, a Republican congressman from New York, says he is going to start carrying a gun because, well, he can. The baseball shooting will recede into the maw of history. No one will learn anything.