If guns make us safer, not less safe, why hasn’t the GOP-controlled Congress removed the metal detectors from the U.S. Capitol and allowed armed citizens, including congressmen, staff members, lobbyists and tourists, to protect their lives and property while visiting the building? (While they’re at it, they could actually let people visit the building, rather than compel them to enter it through a separate visitors’ center and submit to guided tours.)

Of course, the question answers itself: because members of Congress, no less than anyone else, don’t want to be shot. They may not admit it, but there is no other plausible explanation for the discordance between the safety that they demand for themselves and the risk they wish to impose on the rest of the country.

This point begs another question. An increasingly popular trope among conservative opponents of firearm control is that the Second Amendment secures the right of citizens to raise arms against their elected representatives. Do they really believe that? If so, why not show, rather than just tell?