There’s a good reason most new gun laws fail to pass: they will not produce any results. They infringe rights with no compensatory benefits. They are action for the sake of action, rather than action for a worthwhile benefit.

Nearly every gun crime, mass shooting or terrorist killing involves multiple violations of existing gun laws. Adding one more accomplishes nothing.

That is not to say that there are no possibilities for beneficial regulation. But the proposed bills offered up by the Brady’s of the country bury those reasonable reforms under tons of unjustified “reforms” that are useless for their intended purpose. They know that tactic will kill the bill; they do it because they want the issue much more than they want the reasonable reform to pass.

For example, it’s quite easy to close the gun show “loophole” in a way that all parties can live with. Simply require a registered gun dealer on site at the show to oversee the transaction at no cost and to contact the state’s background facility, same as they would for a purchase in their store. But every proposal for dealing with that reform is buried in so much other unacceptable over-reach that they always fail.

Most of the mass shootings that are not terrorist related involve two common elements: bullying and/or mental illness. I notice that there is very little progress being made against these factors, even though reforms in those areas would have ample bipartisan support and directly address the causes. Again, it isn’t progress that is desired so much as a potent election issue.