After these mass shootings, gun sales do go up, because people start getting freaked out.
In the wake of the Newtown shootings, gun opponents and others have called for tighter restrictions on the sale of weapons and better background checks on buyers, measures that are sure to face an uphill battle in Washington.
Gun violence costs Americans $100 billion a year, according to a new book by two economists that is the first effort to make a comprehensive estimate of the price the nation pays for criminal shootings, gun accidents and suicides committed with guns.
Rather than identifying Americans' easy and even vaunted access to firearms as a leading cause of mass shootings, gun rights advocates would rather blame gun violence on mental illness, bad parenting and other factors other than the cheap and easy availability of guns.
He will know that Michelle Obama has a downer on junk food, that Republicans are losing the argument over Obamacare, that the rock-star economist Thomas Piketty is in a spot of bother over his statistics (as revealed by the Financial Times last Saturday) and that, following the latest California shootings, gun control is once again a hot topic on the other side of the Atlantic.
Guns purchased illegally online also have been linked to police shootings, gun trafficking and sales to minors.
It defies reason that in the wake of these mass shootings gun laws continue to become more permissible, rather than more restrictive.
Being able to think on your feet and modify the plan as necessary is more important than having the longest-shooting gun or the best martial art skills.
To the extent that the Republican candidates recognize that the common denominator of mass shootings is guns, their answer is more guns — in the hands of everyone from preachers to Paris bartenders — and more fear, sown just as carelessly.
Guns obviously aren't the problem in the recent spate of public shootings involving guns in America.
