Over in the House, when asked recently what was more likely—passage of gun control or Speaker John Boehner becoming a pagan—a senior GOP leadership aide told Buzzfeed: “Probably the latter.”

Even were the Senate to summon 60 votes (unlikely), and even were Mr. Boehner to risk the renewed wrath of his caucus by moving such a bill (crazy unlikely), any legislation would fall to members such as Virginia’s Bob Goodlatte (who runs the Judiciary Committee) and Pete Sessions (who runs the Rules Committee). Mr. Goodlatte is strong on gun rights. Mr. Sessions is from Texas.

… At what point will Democrats have the spare bandwidth to address gun control? Also open to question is whether the White House intends to spend its political capital on that perilous subject, rather than on presidential priorities like immigration reform.

The White House is playing its usual fuzzy double-game. Does it intend to stick to mental-health recommendations and slough off on Congress any gun decisions? Or does it intend to embrace gun control in its liberal remake of the country? Was the leak that the Biden task force is debating big gun restrictions a signal of a fight to come? Or was it a deliberate head fake—to make smaller proposals look more reasonable? No one has a clue.