The best part of this segment about rational, sane gun laws is Matthew Dowd, centrist extraordinaire, taking a stand firmly against the usual gun argument that the answer to mass shootings like Sandy Hook is to simply arm everyone, including teachers, doctors, preachers and Santa. Dowd made an apt analogy to schoolyard bullies that's quite clear:

When there's a kid in the school yard with a baseball bat, we don't give everybody else baseball bats and say go to deal with it and defend yourself. What we do is we take the baseball bat away from the bad kid or the bully and then we sit down and say what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen -- we've got to take the baseball bat away from the bully.

When Matthew Dowd is the sanest voice, aside from Katrina VandenHeuvel who is always sane, progress is being made.

Grover Norquist plays the Tea Party hand as usual, claiming that this is just lefties ginning up lefty arguments for purely political purposes, which is the typical argument being advanced by gun nuts. I would like to remind Grover that he had no objection to two wars being started or passage of the Patriot Act because of 9-11. Is there no greater and more clear example of using tragedy to advance policy?

That's how it works, Grover. Things happen. People respond. Policy is made in response, for better or for worse. It sounds lovely to try and minimize it by saying "oh, you're just using this tragedy to advance your long-held beliefs." But that's how it works. It's time to stop saying that's a bad thing.

As for Mayor Cory Booker, he is playing the middle against the ends here, as usual. Since he's declared his intention to run for the Senate, he has made the political calculus that "sticking to the pragmatic center" is his safest and best pathway to that office.

Props to Dowd for leaving the safe zone and saying the right thing. Booker could take a lesson from him.

Full transcript below the fold.