Gun control is not a magical spell. I say this, because when there is a shooting, people invoke the word “gun control” like there is some special law that will keep someone intent on murder from being able to access a gun. The problem is, there are 400 million guns in this country and they’re basically everywhere. I mean, I’m in a Texas neighborhood — there’s probably hundreds of guns around me right now. So what exactly is the law that keeps a criminal from picking one of those up?

Maybe to look at this more objectively, we should talk about something other than guns. How about lamps. Like guns, those are pretty ubiquitous. Let’s imagine we had to keep lamps out of the hands of criminals or people could die.

Now, you might pass stringent laws on purchasing new lamps, but there’s already hundreds of millions of lamps out there. I guess you could start lamp confiscation (though that would make people angry; they love lamp). But how would that work? An honor system? Or would throw out the Constitution and go door to door checking every one’s homes for lamps? And how many would that miss considering people would hide lamps from the fascist, lamp-hating government? Plus there’s lamps in attics and basements people would just forgot about. Also recall that it’s not that hard to make a lamp — it’s just wires and a big metal socket for the bulb. People could make makeshift lamps. I guess you could try to make bulbs more expensive — which I guess they did by outlawing incandescent bulbs — but you can still get plenty of cheap bulbs from Mexico.

If you’re honest about it, you’d have to admit it’s basically impossible to stop criminals from getting their hands on working lamps. Thus the only real strategy is to prevent them from using them, such as really harsh laws for possession of a lamp in commission of a crime. Of course, that won’t stop people intent on mass murder who don’t care if they live or die from using lamps, but that’s always going to be an edge case that’s hard to prevent.