We’ve been covering Republicans’ various deflection strategies (if you can even call them strategies) on addressing gun reform in the wake of the latest mass shootings in the U.S. for a few weeks. You might even be tired of it by now — we’ve heard it all, blaming everything from “doors” to abortion access to trans-rights for the mass shootings that plague our nation.

This afternoon, in response to the arrest of a man who said he planned to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican National Committee sent out an email with the subject heading “The Democrat SCOTUS Assassin.”

I consider myself middle of the road on police and criminal justice reform issues. As I said in the new episode of the podcast just out this afternoon, high crime rates will snuff out criminal justice reform as surely as night follows day. I’d reiterate a point I’ve made at other points over the years: no one has a greater interest in low crime rates than liberals and progressives because high crime rates spawn conservative politics. They don’t just turn the tide against more humane criminal justice policies. They shift the whole political universe in a more authoritarian, conservative direction. Again, just an observable fact.

But with all this said, the narrative emerging out of yesterday’s primaries that voters sent a big rebuke to Democrats over law and order politics or that it was a rejection of criminal justice reformers is at best incomplete.

On the long list of excuses and deflections gun rights activists use to shut down any talk of gun regulation, one critical angle comes down to numbers. Mass shootings, school shootings, gun massacres — whatever you want to call them — only make up a tiny percentage of the number of people killed every year by guns in the United States. That’s true. Relatedly, AR-15s, the mass shooters’ firearm of choice, account for only a tiny percentage of overall firearms deaths in the United States. That’s true. Indeed, some noted that the 10 African-Americans murdered in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14th may not even have been a majority of the African-Americans killed by firearms on that single day. Using these very real numbers, gun rights activists portray supporters of assault weapons bans, bans on high capacity magazines and the rest as reactive and innumerate. It’s similar to the way that gun activists sometimes try to shut down restriction conversation by noting how people horrified by all the carnage don’t know all the technical differences between this gun and that one.

This is just a wild story. Really a sign of the times in many ways. A seventy-something Democratic protestor showed up at a Republican event in Arizona with far-right Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters. He was clearly there looking to make a stir. The man, Peter Jackson, had on a Black Lives Matter shirt, a “Jail Trump” hat and a mask. So clearly he wasn’t going to blend in. He also had his phone out videotaping. So he clearly wanted a record of how the crowd reacted. But he wasn’t violent in any way. The crowd quickly got violent with him, punching him, knocking him down. The Masters supporters claimed that he attacked a woman. The video clearly shows that’s not true. At one point Masters puts his hands around the guy’s neck and starts throttling him. It would probably be a bit much to say he tried to strangle him. But it wouldn’t be wildly off the mark. Anyway, THIS IS ALL ON VIDEO.

We mentioned last week that after the top GOP candidates for the Michigan governor’s race were stripped from the ballot over forged signatures, the remaining at least nominal frontrunner (poll leaders in most recent poll) was a guy named Ryan Kelley, who was literally part of the mob that stormed the Capitol building on January 6th and had a lot of connections to the guys who plotted to kidnap and murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Well, he just got arrested by the FBI. No details yet on what the charges are or why he was taken into custody.

11:49 AM: Kelley’s arrest was part of a raid on his home and stems from his actions breaching the Capitol complex on January 6th. Charges forthcoming.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! Josh and Kate discuss Tuesday’s primaries and the forces currently guiding the country’s trajectory.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I wanted to share a few quick thoughts with you before tonight’s hearings.

One very minor point is that for some time I’ve heard complaints to the effect of, “what has the committee been doing all this time? Most of what we’ve found out about January 6th has been from the media.” This is mostly a misunderstanding. The great majority of reporting you’ve seen over the last six months revealing texts and other material about the insurrection originated with the committee’s investigation. So this isn’t an either/or. The committee investigation has almost certainly been the primary generator of new information even though very little of it has come officially from the investigation.

Republicans have been putting in a lot of work today to convince you, before the Jan. 6 committee has even spoken a word this evening, that the findings are all a bunch of bs; the product of hysterical lefty Democrats being snowflakes about a few people breaking into the people’s House.

8:50 PM: For a moment there I thought they were going to have Jared Kushner do another hero turn as they have with other Trumpers, including the President’s daughter. Didn’t turn out that way.

8:40 PM: “The White House was receiving specific reports in the days leading up to January 6th, including during President Trump’s rally, indicating that elements in the crowd were preparing for violence at the Capitol.”

8:31 PM: Pardons. We have pardons.

8:23 PM: I didn’t fully get this in advance. But clearly in addition to getting the story out there, one of the dynamics here is turning the Trump world against itself, showing deposition after deposition in which Trumpers – people who continue to be big Trumpers – say clearly that all the central claims, the bases of Trumpism, are BS.

8:18 PM: “Mike Pence deserves it.” Trump on supporters desire to hang Mike Pence. Yikes.

8:12 PM: Notable that Thompson places the fulcrum of our small-r republican history in the Civil War. This is true both for the decades that preceded the Civil War and those that followed it. So much of our discussion of our republican history centers on the Revolution. And for good reason. But in the focus on the vindication of the rights and liberties of American citizens and in the struggle against the domestic enemies of the American republic, the Civil War remains at the center of our national life.