All true Gun Nuts (including me) have been expecting some straight-nut nut case to run amuck somewhere in the United States and murder a bunch or people. We did not expect an attack directed against a police station, a shooting range or a gun store.

The straight-nuts are generally not nutty enough to attack venues where they are likely to encounter immediate counter-attacks. We always anticipated that a peaceful place would provide the murder scene and we have always known that a population of 310,000,000 people will produce a blood-thirsty maniac from time to time.

So it has come to pass that a nasty little psycho named Dylann Roof has slaughtered what was probably the most innocent and harmless group of people he could find in the whole state of South Carolina. The exact nature of the atrocity comes as a shock, and the extraordinary Christian forgiveness of the victims’ loved one is a surprise; but the reaction of the Control Nuts surprises no one who pays attention to the politics of gun control.

First and foremost, as always, there are renewed demands for severe regulation of “assault rifles.” It does not matter that the killer used a hand-gun and it has never mattered that feet and fists kill more people in the United States than “assault rifles.” What matters is that a lot of middle class citizens don’t like the word “rifle” and when you add a dangerous adjective like “assault” they like it still less. The most common “assault rifle” in the United States is the AR-15. It’s black and dangerous looking, the perfect target for a first step to universal registration.

In January 2013 New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature, passed the SAFE act, the first gun control legislation in the nation after then Newtown Connecticut massacre. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland moved next, passing the most restrictive gun control legislation the United States. Crime in all categories went on pretty much as before in both states. Right now gun deaths are spiking in Baltimore regardless of O’Malley’s legislation.

The SAFE act results are more instructive because they point up the pointlessness of this agitation about these scary “assault weapons.” Although estimates of the number of the black, scary AR-15 rifles in the state have ranged up to a million, there have been only 25,536 applications to register “assault weapons” in New York. These figures are a little uncertain since the state’s authorities have avoided transparency as hypochondriacs avoid lepers. This is a usually reliable sign of concealed failure.

The Maine Democratic Party welcomed O’Malley as its 2012 convention keynote speaker with extravagant praise which made no mention of his fierce, heroic, courageous devotion to gun control. This is Maine, after all, gun control is not something Democrats in our state (outside of Portland) care to discuss too openly. Fierce, heroic, courageous devotions are fine things in their place but their place is not here; not where gun control is concerned.

A similar reluctance to discuss awkward subjects has been manifested by Senator Bernie, “The Socialist” Sanders. Gun control is a hot issue for most leftlurching Democrats these days, but not for Bernie. You see, he’s from Vermont and there are a lot of Vermonters who own guns.

This remands us that control is a largely middle class issue in the more urbanized states. They have no respect for the yokels in the sticks and think it’s a good idea to force them to adopt more urbane values. These people are comfortable suburbanites, like those who populate Bergen County, New Jersey. They don’t own guns, don’t like guns and don’t think other people should like guns either, so the government should do something about them.

DO SOMETHING! is the rallying cry for the Control Nuts and they don’t appear to care about whether that “something” is any use. Look for discussion about the problems and results of implementation and you look in vain.

It doesn’t matter that New York’s SAFE act has produced massive evasion and defiance; that hundreds of thousands of scary black rifles remain unregistered. Something was done. That was enough.

In Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who seems intent on taking liberals on head-long, has just signed two new bills into law which expand the rights of gun owners. One removes a 48-hour waiting period for those looking to purchase a firearm and the other allows off-duty or retired police officers to carry concealed weapons at public schools.

The governor insists that the signing was scheduled before the Charleston butchery. It doesn’t matter. He can’t make the liberals hate him any more than they already do and the Second Amendment defenders will admire his apparent boldness.