If you can bear to spend six minutes watching Elliot Rogers’ “retribution” rant to camera, do it now.

Then, imagine Elliot didn’t murder six students and blast another seven into hospital.

He’d be just another YouTuber venting to camera, albeit with a particularly exaggerated self-absorption, smugness and an absurd predilection for cackling like a Bond villain. You’d figure he needs to get over himself, stop acting like Blofeld, go out and get laid.

Except he didn’t. And he had a dangerous sense of entitlement.

To be more precise — a fatal sense of entitlement.

You may as well stop reading now if you haven’t watched it. Listened to his logic and seen the whites of his eyes.

Elliot believed he was entitled to get laid, entitled to be loved and entitled to kill for it. Knowing what he did next chills you to the bone, but Rogers is so far removed from reality, so delusional on his entitlements it’s impossible to take him seriously in advance of his savagely prosecuting that “entitlement” to kill. But of the many things Rogers believed he was entitled to, the one thing he never mentions, is firearms or his entitlement to own them — he doesn’t have to, America’s legislature agrees.

Let’s not get into the whole constitutional debate, it only leads you down the well-trodden path of corporate lobbying, the NRA and a spineless, witless, supine legislature.

Instead, let’s focus on just one tangible fact.

So long as there are people like Elliot Rogers entitled to bear arms, America will have to live with the consequences.

Let’s modify that slightly...

So long as Capitol Hill agrees with the above, America will have to live with the consequences.

America’s legislature can follow the course of doing nothing. But make no mistake — acquiescence is a decision, a leadership decision, and in the case of gun control, a decision to do nothing.

Such decisions define a nation’s identity and in particular, that of it’s leadership.

I used to really enjoy shooting. Half-heartedly muttering “Suppose it’s for the best”, as I handed a $15,000 armoury over to the police some time ago. But if I hadn’t — and if I was the father of one of those victims, I could well be taking a trip to DC with plenty of spare magazines. That’s entitlement for you.