The New York Times has two pieces, one an editorial the other a column. The reality is the proposals for increased gun regulation in these pieces, for the most part, would have done nothing to stop Friday's horrible, horrible shooting. And Kristof suggests regulations from other countries, ignoring the fact they would likely run afoul of the 2nd Amendment in this country's Constitution.

Kristof does make an intersting point:

The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns.

Kristof argues that other countries have lunatics and criminals, but don't have the access to guns we do, so it must be guns. Okay, let's examine that. There certainly seems to be a sudden increase in mass shootings, but has there been a sudden increase in guns? No, the easy access to guns Kristof and his newspaper bemoan has changed lately, yet the frequency of these horrible shootings has? Gun access isn't a variable, it's a constant. Yet mass murder is on the rise and Kristof argues the shooters aren't the variable????

I called this post gun control bait and switch because the regulations they argue for aren't really the ones they want. They suggest these "reasonable" changes would make us much safer when what they really want is a near total ban on guns that they argue won't ever happen.

Gun access didn't suddenly get easier before Kansas City, Portland or Newtown. or any other site of a recent mass shooting. It's a mistake to argue that these shooters could have used any weapon. Guns are deadly weapons and there is a reason they are the weapon of choice in these incidents. But the reality is as horrible as they episodes are, they still represent a nearly microscopic fraction of guns in the U.S. Kristof the Times and other gun control advocates are after far more than "sensible gun restrictions." And they have no shame in using these tragedies to immediately push their agenda.