I have an entirely different position concerning gun regulation to most, including yours, which you address most mightily w/ solid statistical analysis, about which I readily admit to being a luddite. My lean has nothing to do w/either statistics nor efficacy pertaining to regulation. It’s about morality.

In your essays on guns, you eliminate pretty much everything but the suggestion of licensing as responsible gun control, the efficacy of which as hypothetical as any other, in my view. Comprehensive background checks and other measures may have no effect on such things as mass shootings, which, as you put it, are fabulously rare- a hard reality for a Parkland parent. In the same statistical manner you show that other countries aren’t really relevant as comparatives in any analysis of shooting incidence.

Here’s where morality is the issue. Virtually every law on our books functions as a deterrent first and a punishment second. Laws stop nothing, yet we purport to be a nation built on them, while revering an amendable constitution which has allowed for immense moral flexibility down the years. If we’re a nation of laws informed by that constitution, the laws around human rights, equal protection, freedom of speech, etc., then our very morality is coded in black letter law. Enter the 2nd amendment. Any discussion of new regulation is always couched in terms of freedom, the freedom to own lethality taking precedence over the freedom to be safe from it. I postulate that such current “freedom” has become extreme, and nothing less than moral bankruptcy.

To position the argument as one of freedom, to stand against regulation of types or accessories after obscenities such as Sandy Hook or the efficient carnage in Las Vegas, is in this citizen’s mind eschewing the responsibility we have to one another. That’s where a comparison to other nations is valid beyond statistical analysis. Compared to Japan or New Zealand, we’re horribly adrift- the sheer immorality of refusing to step over the very low bar of protection from lethality and instead choosing the “freedom” to its use makes us very backward indeed. We live stubbornly proud of our wild west legacy, refusing to check our guns at the door of the public saloon, thanks in part to NRA money and influence. New regulation would at the very least establish a beachhead of decency where none currently exists. In short, morality first, efficacy second. Don Quixote would no doubt agree.