You will note what the report very clearly does not say, which is that anything could have been done to prevent Alexis from obtaining firearms or that a slightly different combination of gun-control laws would have stopped him from shooting up the base. Thus does it stand in stark opposition to the rhetoric of the usual suspects, who immediately attempted to twist the incident into a justification for more authoritarian laws, and of President Obama himself, who gave an extraordinarily political, mawkish, and fact-free speech at the memorial service.

This was always preposterous. As I wrote at the time:

“If there is a more “gun free” zone in the United States than a Washington, D.C.–based Naval facility that houses non-combat groups such as the JAG Corps and the Navy Band then I would like to know where it is. Washington, D.C. itself is now so locked down that there isn’t even a (legal) gun store within the city limits (one has to get one’s firearms through a dealer who works out of the city’s police headquarters), it remains the last place in the country without a concealed-carry regime, and it inexplicably limits its residents to buying weapons that have been approved by the states of California and Massachusetts. At the Navy Yard, meanwhile, most military personnel are not armed, and neither are the civilians who make up most of the workforce. All visitors to the Yard are asked for ID on the way in, and, if it is deemed necessary, they are searched to make sure that they are carrying neither firearms nor contraband.”