Massacre Prevention

When it comes to reacting to a news bulletin about the mass murder of school children by a crazed shooter, until now, it has seemed there have been two kinds of people:

• Most people have been stunned, then for a few days their feelings have teetered between quiet sadness and bitter outrage. Eventually, they have accepted that such killings are probably inevitable with the all-powerful NRA preventing change, so they have tried not to dwell on it.

• A noisy and paranoid minority has gotten profoundly spooked. So, each time those folks have rushed out to buy what have been called "assault rifles." While at the gun shops the craziest of them have also bought large magazines and all the ammo they could haul. 

The fearful and focused minority has ruled in recent years. Now that's going to change, because to a great extent its power has been standing on noise.

In spite of what some politicians might think the majority of Americans now want change, and at long-last the NRA's noisy propaganda is going stale. Its ability to frame the issues is melting away like a drenched wicked witch.

Hey, we don't have to keep calling the rapid-fire weapons preferred by schoolhouse shooters "assault rifles," which is a term designed to make them sound cool to fools. Maybe such deadly tools are better described as "weapons of mass murder." Only a fool would want WMMs to be legal.

Instead of demanding better "gun control," which sounds like Big Brother is coming to confiscate old revolvers from locked drawers in bedrooms, maybe what we really need is "massacre prevention."