I’m fond of pointing out that the main reason Progressives win every fight is that their opponents make the mistake of thinking it is a debate over facts and reasons. The people calling themselves conservative right now are sure that all they have to do is round up the facts and present them to the other side and the Left will throw down their weapons and embrace them as brothers.

Progressives don’t care about guns. They care about who they imagine are the gun owners. Neo-Puritan fanatics associate guns with southerners in particular and bad whites in general. It’s the tool of the sinful. They believe this with the intensity of a zealot because it is wrapped up in how they define themselves as the anointed. Therefore, facts and reason have no impact on the believers, the statistics of crime have been explained for half a century.

Gun control has always been a proxy-debate that is more signalling than a debate. Good whites from Yankeedom see guns as a stand in for southerners in particular, but all bad whites in general. After these shootings, the good whites get to have their day for acts of public piety. It’s why they say the same things over and over. Rituals are like that. The illogical of gun control has been detailed for as long as I have been alive. Yet, the true believers belied ever more intensely.

Facts like how the homicide rate declined by nearly half since 1992, despite multiple surges in gun purchases, never enter the debate.