Our national tragedies follow their own dreary script. The unthinkable happens, again: School children are massacred, this time just a week after a hate-filled rampage in a grocery store. There is a ritual outpouring of sorrow and rage, a senator's impotent anguish goes viral, and that rueful Onion headline gets updated as another community wails.
Yet our politics remains trapped in a pitiable chorus of Surely, now, we will act and Sorry, no, nothing to be done. Even something as toothless as expanded background checks looks impossible. Dopey ideas like armed guards at single school entrances are proposed by politicians who have never apparently seen an American high school or a bored mall cop.
