Liberals want to have a “national conversation” on the subject of guns. Uh-oh! Whenever liberals want to have a national conversation about anything, what they mean is that they want you to shut up with your reality-based facts and figures and simply do what they say.

Nothing says liberals are losing the argument like the desire to exploit a national tragedy with a national conversation. Perhaps they fail to realize conversation means dialogue not monologue, but whatever.

“If they think television is responsible, then they don’t even understand the tragedy, let alone the solution.”The Царица, who is every bit as smart and witty and powerful as the other Gormogon wives, kind of exploded this evening on the Newtown, Connecticut, tragedy. As a school teacher, she had the opportunity to discuss the event with other teachers, and she lit up on the Czar this evening when he relayed the Mandarin’s disgust that the Discovery channel has pulled all of their firearm-related shows because of two complaint letters relating to Newtown.

Her tirade went along these lines: “That’s completely inappropriate and fails to solve anything. If they think television is responsible, then they don’t even understand the tragedy, let alone the solution. The liberals keep pushing this narrative that everything needs to be on the table: not just gun rights, but school procedures and mental health should be considered too. It’s crap: this is 99% a mental health issue, about 0.9% school procedures, and 0.1% gun rights. Bottom line.”

She shares the Czar’s distaste with some pro-gun suggestions to arm teachers. Look, thanks to her, the Czar knows a boatload of teachers, and you can’t trust half of them with craft projects, let alone firearms. Can you imagine Linda Heffner snapping out a 9mm, we asked. The Царица chuckled in agreement.

Protecting a school against a Newtown-level event is like protecting a school against a meteorite hitting it. Nothing will ultimately work. The nature of disaster is that many things have to happen, which means one solution will never solve anything.

Or put it this way: Sandy Hill did everything right. They exceeded standards for school security. The Connecticut gun laws worked. The police responded as they were supposed to. And still 18 beautiful kids were butchered. Although evidence is still being put together, it appears that the killer went to his mother’s house whereupon she let him in. He then grabbed one of her legally owned and properly maintained weapons, shot her, and then took the rest. He continued over to the school and shot out the glass on a locked door, reached inside, and opened the door for himself from the inside. Hey—fire code says those doors must open from the inside. Fires happen in schools all the time; shootings only rarely. With that trick, he was able to continue unimpeded. The police arrived within minutes, and the shooter had already killed everyone he was going to kill that day.

No, he didn’t need a Bushmaster rifle. And he didn’t need high-capacity magazines. Nor did he work some loophole in the laws. Heck, he didn’t need firearms at all: he could have easily killed as many children with gasoline and a match. Or an axe. Or a chainsaw. You name it: the outcome would be identical.

But dammit, something has got to be done. Or so the politicians tell us: especially those at the federal level who have no business being involved in these issues at all. These are ultimately state and local issues (even if the shock is felt around the world), so all this posturing is pointless.

In fact, the Czar will share with you the future. By 2018, the Newtown event will have achieved absolutely nothing:

• The media will continue to glorify killers by detailing every aspect of their unhappy lives, and put their faces on television, on magazines, and on newspapers, making them anti-heroes with rock star recognition.
• The next killer will see that attention and decide he wants it too: there will be another mass shooting.
• School safety and security procedures will continue almost exactly as they are today.
• Mentally ill and dangerous people will still be free to act on their impulses because there will be no state facilities or laws that easily enable family members the ability to enroll such people in working programs with productive outcomes.
• There will be no ban on assault weapons because assault weapons do not exist except in the minds of people who know little about firearms.
• Detachable box and drum magazines will continue to hold 15, 20, 30, or even 100 rounds because this is an effective way to hold ammunition.
• People will continue to carry concealed weapons (likely in all 50 states).
• Semi-automatic weapons will continue to dominate firearm sales because they are incredibly efficient.
• Movies will not tone down the levels of violence, and will never be able to provide a link to acts of real violence.
• Video games will not tone down the levels of violece, and will never be able to provide a link to acts of real violence.
• America will still have a firearm fatality rate per 100,000 people on par with many so-called enlightened countries.
• Nothing is going to change.

The reasons are complex and intertwined, but one of the simplest explanations is because liberals (both Republicans and Democrats, by the way) continue to construct false arguments based on faulty premises that create such unwiedly social constructs to ensure that nothing gets done.

So what should be done? What would be the Czar’s response? Take a step back: violence of this sort is decreasing dramatically, since its record high in 1929. Newtown is, thankfully, an almost unheard-of rarity.

In fact, while we clearly need a massive overhaul of local and state mental health solutions to provide help (and not incarceration) to millions of people regardless of Newtown, we might want to address a tragedy even worse than this: 18 dead children is a freaking weekend in Chicago. Sure, it isn’t spectacular like Newtown—just as a plane crash killing 80 people is more spectacular than the 32,000 people killed in traffic accidents in the US—but to a grieving mother and father, the tragedy is just as painful.

So we can all talk and make bold promises and weeping speeches and beat our breasts in woe, but nothing is going to change or magically correct these tragedies. Watch and see.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.