When we need golden resolve, we get rocked

None of these strategies, please note, seeks to prevent massacres. Rather, each implicitly asks us to accept that they are inevitable and unstoppable, like natural disasters.

After all, you wouldn’t pass a law against tornadoes or earthquakes, and some gun-rights advocates would have us believe it makes just as little sense to try to keep mass shootings from occurring. They ask us to accept the unacceptable as a given.

The problem is, a mass shooting is not a natural disaster, but a human one. Thus, it can be legislated against. Nor is the fact that a law will not be 100 percent effective a sensible reason not to pass it. No law is 100 percent effective.

Shall we repeal prohibitions against murder or child molestation because those crimes still occur?

That said, the right has no monopoly on unworkable ideas.

On Tuesday, The New York Times published an op-ed from former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens arguing that the solution to gun violence lies in repeal of the Second Amendment. This, he says, “would be simple.” It wouldn’t. In the first place, there’s no reason to believe proponents could muster the necessary support from 38 states.

In the second place, the attempt would instantly validate every paranoiac fantasy the NRA has inculcated in its followers, making violent civil unrest inevitable. In the third place, there is no need. As Canada proves daily, it’s entirely possible to balance gun rights with common-sense restrictions that save lives. Comprehensive background checks and a ban on private ownership of high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons would be good places to start.

What we lack is not a way to stop tragedies, but a will.

Reinhold Niebuhr famously prayed for “serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”

But so long as America lacks the second and third, we can never have the first.

At least we’ve got plenty of rocks.