I’ve gotten a great deal of pushback to my “Candor” post in which I argued that a “functional majority” of the country in fact supports the gun status quo. It’s not big money or the gun lobby. It’s us. This is what we seem to want. One longtime reader said my comments amounted to a city slicker demonization of rural America. Another good friend said I was discounting the role of opinion shaping institutions like Fox News. And yet another said I was mistaking preference for inertia.

I took these criticisms seriously because these are each serious people. As so often is the case the disagreements are as much semantic as they are based on different readings of the facts at hand. I said a “functional majority” since I’m pretty sure if we held a plebiscite the status quo wouldn’t come out on top. But we don’t govern by plebiscite. Pro-gun America has all sorts of built in advantages — regionalism, the rural-urban split, intensity and a lot more. Inertia is certainly a big factor too. And what about all the polls that show overwhelming, sometimes verging on unanimous support for things like red flag laws and background checks?

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Texas school shooting and Tuesday’s primary races.

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

I favor licensing of gun use and ownership on the model of drivers’ licensing and automobile registration, but I want to comment instead on the politics of gun control. In the wake of this latest school massacre, Democrats and a handful of Republicans may pass something, but it is unlikely they will get sixty votes for a measure that might actually curtail gun use. It’s a question of salience — and similar considerations apply to the politics of student loans and abortion.

As I noted yesterday, early reports of mass shootings are subject to the fog of war. Initial details are incomplete or wrong. We already have some substantial revisions to what happened when the shooter initially entered the school. As I noted, the first reports suggested that the gunman had shot his way past three officers — one school police force officer and two municipal police officers. The picture now looks significantly different — though the overall picture, I would argue, is much the same.

According to the latest reports, a school security officer exchanged gun fire with the shooter prior to the shooter entering the school. The two municipal police officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter once he was already in the school but — apparently — before he had actually begun shooting kids. They apparently felt they were outgunned. So they called in backup.

Here is the part of the story that is new and deeply disturbing. Apparently police on the scene waited for a significant period of time — like tens of minutes — while parents outside the schools begged them to go in and kill the shooter. Parents even brainstormed about whether they should go in and rush the shooter themselves since the mass shooting was unfolding as everyone waited outside.