NPR: Mental Health Professionals Pooh-Pooh New Gun Laws. “A study of experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility found that they were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.”

JOHN FUND: Obama’s Completely Bogus 40% Number On No-Background-Check Gun Sales. “If you look at guns that were bought, traded, borrowed, rented, issued as a requirement of the job, or won through raffles, 85 percent went through Federal Firearm Licensees and would have been subject to a background check. Only 15 percent would have been transferred without a background check.” And even that is probably an overstatement today.

Plus: “And as for background checks, even the most vigorously policed would have done nothing to stop the killers at Newtown or the theater in Aurora, Colo. Adam Lanza stole his guns from his mother’s storage locker after murdering her, and Joseph Holmes’ problems with mental illness were not reported to authorities by his psychologist.” When you use a tragedy to peddle “solutions” that wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy, then you’re not really peddling solutions at all. . . .

PHOTOS: The use of children in politics — if you find it persuasive, you’d better sharpen up. Drudge knows imagery. “The implicit argument the political leader makes, in all 3 of these pictures, is: I’m making the country good for the sake of the children. The child can’t vouch for the policies. The child hasn’t competently requested anything. The child is merely a prop representing goodness, innocence, and the future.”

MAJOR MEDIA MALFUNCTION: Michael Silence: The media’s Te’ogate.

Old journalism: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Today’s journalism: “Hey, it made a nice story.”

UPDATE: Reader Jeffrey Lindemann writes: “You can’t get away from the Te’o story this morning. Now that they’ve gotten the taste of what it’s like to try to get to the bottom of something, maybe some of those sports reporters who are trying to track down whether Te’o was a participant in, or victim of, the hoax can inspire some of their colleagues in the msm to do the same thing with respect to Fast & Furious and/or Benghazi.” Not holding my breath. But, as with gun control, it gives them something to talk about besides the debt/deficit debacle.

WELL, TO BE FAIR, NOTHING’S EVER HIS FAULT: Climate change inaction the fault of environmental groups, report says: Academic paper largely clears President Obama of blame over failure to pass climate legislation through Congress.

CHART OF THE DAY: Housing Starts, Adjusted vs. Unadjusted.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: WHAT COMES AFTER THE BLUE MODEL?

Briefly, the idea is that after World War II America was organized around a group of heavily regulated monopoly and semi-monopoly companies. AT&T was the only telephone company; there were three big networks, three big car companies and so on. There was very little foreign competition, and these companies were able to offer stable, lifetime employment to most of their workers. The workforce was heavily unionized, and the earnings of the big companies were divided between shareholders, managers, workers and government in a predictable way. An intellectual and administrative class of planners, social scientists and managers ran the big institutions and administered the government.

Several forces came together to break up this system. Foreign competition, first from rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War II and then from low wage newly industrializing countries around the world, eroded the market position of companies like the Big Three auto manufacturers. The rise of offshore banking eroded the tight financial controls of the postwar era. Growing consumer impatience with the high prices and poor quality offered by monopoly companies like the telephone monopoly led to political pressure to deregulate and introduce more competition. Technological change, especially in information processing and communications, led to disruptive changes that shifted the advantage to nimble and lean companies and left the bureaucratic, slow moving giants of the Blue Age behind. American society became increasingly individualistic, with both the left and the right rebelling against the authority of experts and bureaucrats.

As a result, the old way of doing things doesn’t work anymore. Some of the changes—like the multiplication of gadgets and rise of the internet—are widely considered to be wonderful things. Others, like the rise of instability in financial markets, the polarization of incomes and the consequences of the collapse in manufacturing employment for blue collar employment and wages, are much less popular. But the reality is that there is no going back to blue; Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall and he can’t be patched up. The question is what do we do now.

Obama’s answer is more of the same, only bigger. I don’t think that will work. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

CULTURE: Liberals Locked And Loaded In Defense Of Hollywood.

Now, see, I can remember when even using the phrase “locked and loaded” meant you were some kind of murderous nut. And now it’s casually deployed by Joe Scarborough. But the narrative has changed, I guess.

A PROPOSED BILL IN CONGRESS TO REGULATE PROSECUTORIAL ABUSE: Aaron’s Law.

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY fires back at Obama’s gun limits.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on HDTVs.

Also, today only: Up to 57% Off Select Precor Workout Equipment.

INDEED IT DOES: White House Struggles With Chuck Hagel.

INSTAVISION: Disaster Socialism: Why Gun Hysteria Could Lead to Another Expansion of Government. With fashion leader Nick Gillespie. As you can see, I decided that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.

U.S. ATTORNEY CARMEN ORTIZ defends Aaron Swartz prosecution.

UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates writes: “The prosecutor in the Aaron Swartz case wasn’t US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, it was Obama appointee US Attorney Carmen Ortiz.”

IF AL FRANKEN IS UNDECIDED. . . . Sen. Al Franken Raises Doubts About Support For Assault Weapon Ban.

UPDATE: CNN Poll: Support For Gun Control Slips In Past Month.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dana Loesch Destroys Piers Morgan In On-Air Gun Debate. Video at the link.

IT’S A MOVEMENT OF OLD, WHITE WOMEN: Most Under 30 Don’t Know Roe v. Wade was About Abortion.

GOP MESSAGING: Children Against Deficit Spending.

ALGERIAN HOSTAGE UPDATE: Reports say many hostages killed in Algeria siege.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY THE FEDS WOULD BE JAILING PORN PRODUCERS: And they were right!

I HAVE TO SAY, I HOPE SO: Roll Call: Is Rand Paul Getting an Early Start on 2016 White House Race? At the moment, I’m more interested in 2014, but I like him.

POLITICAL CHILD ABUSE? How Many Kids Had a Choice in Writing Letters Asking Obama to Ban Guns?

IT’S MOSTLY JUNK SCIENCE: Jacob Sullum: The Problem With the ‘Public Health Research on Gun Violence’ That Obama Wants You to Pay For. CDC research on guns and violence has been dishonest, and debunked as such in the past. Why is it likely to be better? It’s not. As Sullum says: “Why would Obama want to waste taxpayer money on this sort of tendentious, prejudice-confirming research? I bet you can figure that out—without a government grant.”

I’VE FOUND THAT BIG MEDIA OUTFITS CAN BE PRETTY CASUAL ABOUT “LITTLE PEOPLE’S” INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, ESPECIALLY PHOTOGRAPHS: Twitter images should not have been used by Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, judge finds. Especially considering how high-horsey they are regarding their own, sometimes.

KATE OBENSHAIN: GOP, NRA need to get pistol-packing suburban mamas out front on gun control. Well, there are plenty of those to be found.