> Surely the greatest country in the world can produce someone capable of making it happen.

You would think so. But I don't see anybody who has the nerve or desire to do so. Part of it is cowardice, but part is an awareness of the facts. I have recorded a number of these already. You mistake awareness of what is practically impossible with shoulder-shrugging.

You'll recall that after the Connecticut school massacre, there were resounding cries for significant new gun laws. In the event, no such laws were enacted. What did happen was that gun sales went sky-high because of a rumor that "Obama is going to use the shooting as an excuse [sic] to outlaw gun sales."

Tens of millions of *voters* want guns. And they are determined to keep the guns they have. And criminals and psychopaths of the kind we're discussing don't give two hoots in hell about the law. If no more guns were to be produced, there would still be plenty of illegal guns to be had and plenty of legal guns to be stolen.

There used to be a familiar bumper sticker that said "God, Guts, and Guns Built America." Many people believe this to be literally true, and the that the three ideas are inseparable.

When I was in public grade school in a large,liberal city, long before the era of mass shootings, we were taught that the intention of the Second Amendment was rwofold: to deter foreign invasions, and to thwart and federal turn toward despotism. In the last resort, the people would be armed and could protect themselves.

Besides the perceived need for self (and more usually family and home) defense, the idea that personal firearms will protect our freedoms from a theoretical rogue government or Chinese invasion is taken very seriously - though not quite as seriously as the idea that the government may one day collapse and it will be every man for himself.

So far, I've not heard more than whisper in the media about any new measures in the wake of the Charleston massacre. And that mere whisper came from the President, who acknowledged in almost the same breath that Washington politics have made real gun reform virtually impossible.

In a democracy, the majority gets what it wants. And it wants guns.

When I wrote my representatives in the wake of the Connecticut massacre that we needed tighter gun laws, I got bland, noncommittal form letter from one, a polite refusal from another, and a near blistering rebuff from the third, who said he'd "never lift a finger" to "prevent families from defending themselves."

Do you see the picture more clearly now?