WELL, THEY HAVE TO RELY ON THIS BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ARGUMENTS: Victor Davis Hanson: The Dangers of Politically Inspired Moral Outrage—From Sandy Hook to What Next?

It is a bad idea to demonize your opponents with epithets such “shameful” and “lying,” given that the case was not made that proposed gun-control legislation would have prevented a Sandy Hook. To prevent these school-shooting horrors might require either armed guards in schools, or Draconian new laws about gratuitous screen and video-game violence, or more frequently incarcerating the mentally unstable, or, on the theory of reducing rapid rates of fire, confiscating millions of previously sold semi-automatic handguns and rifles. All those measures would have offended millions across the political spectrum in ways that demonizing the NRA apparently does not. In the end, it was not the “lying” “gun lobby” that persuaded enough senators to defeat the bill, but the president’s inability to make the argument that his proposals would help stop another Sandy Hook or Columbine.

Moreover, the current sophistry of using catastrophic current events to rush legislative agendas or build political capital is as natural as it is also dangerous — and can rebound in unexpected ways.

Indeed. Related: Former Justice of the Peace Shot Texas Prosecutors, Not Aryan Brotherhood as Chris Matthews Supposed. “The wife of a former justice of the peace revealed to authorities this week that she and her husband are responsible for the deaths of two Texas prosecutors, ending a months-long mystery that aroused speculation, especially by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, that members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas were responsible. On his show, Matthews routinely tied the Aryan Brotherhood to gun-rights supporters.”