National calamity is to the do-something pragmatist what fire is to the Lodgepole Pine: the essential delivery system for reproduction. When you start seeing quotes like “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to do something,” you know it’s getting hot outside.

But this combination of panicked urgency, will to government power, and maddening vagueness can be pretty comical in practice. So it was when the No Labels Huntsman-Manchin roadshow got pinned down on guns by Candy Crowley this weekend…