To wish to prevent another Sandy Hook is an admirable and human instinct. But to chase placebos? That is infinitely less commendable. Typically, when government inaction is the complaint, it is beneficial to eschew emotion in favor of a couple of hard questions. The first is “What is it that you want the state to do?”; the second, “How would the state’s doing this affect the problem?” In this case, the “what” was the Toomey-Manchin bill, which would have forced all the states to run background checks on all private transfers and sales of firearms. And the answer to “What would it have done?”: Nothing.

As a few of the more honest advocates of gun control acknowledged at the time, it is just about possible to argue with a straight face that universal background checks could help to prevent or diminish the general rate of gun crime. But it is certainly not possible to claim that they would prevent or even diminish the number of mass shootings. In fact, to argue that such a requirement would have done anything whatsoever to stop recent massacres isn’t just wrong — it’s deeply dishonest. Those who have been chastising Congress for not reacting to massacres by passing legislation that has nothing to do with massacres should be ashamed of themselves.