The Idiots Against Guns in the media and Congress overdid it this time.
Not wanting to miss a chance to politicize a shooting tragedy, the anti-gun nuts went berserk Monday when news broke that a man had gone on a rampage at a D.C. naval base and killed 12 people.
Long before the facts were known or clear, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and their liberal cousins launched their latest gun-control jihad.
Seizing on an early report from the scene that Aaron Alexis used an AR-15 assault rifle, the Idiots Against Guns pulled out their hymnbooks and sang their favorite tune all day.
Forget the madman who pulled the trigger.
It was the evil AR-15 assault rifle that was responsible for his killing spree. And here was the latest proof that this demonic weapon of death should be banned by the federal government.
We now know the killer didn't buy an AR-15 in Virginia, legally or illegally.
We know he didn't pick up an AR-15 during his rampage.
And we now know the AR-15 never existed.
But the nonexistent AR-15 proved to be a godsend to the liberal media and the professional gun-grabbers in Congress.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin were at the top of their political game. They leaped in front of the TV cameras, blamed the slaughter on a "military assault rifle" and called for more gun control almost before the blood of the victims stopped flowing.
In the media, CNN won worst prize. It was so hung up on pushing the AR-15 angle that on Tuesday, after the FBI reported Alexis had used a shotgun to do his killing, CNN's "journalists" invented a new weapon, the "AR-15 shotgun."
Meanwhile, Monday night's performance by Piers Morgan was pathetic.
CNN's prime-time hysteric was so irrational, so emotionally revved up about the AR-15 being to blame for yet another mass shooting, he could barely blather about America's need for greater gun control or interrupt his guests.
You'd think charter members of Idiots Against Guns like Morgan, Durbin and the editorial writers at The Washington Post would know by now to get the basic facts of a shooting straight before they begin politically exploiting these tragedies.
But that assumes they are interested in finding truth, not spreading propaganda. Facts and nuance and complexity mean nothing to the IAG crowd.
All mass shooting are the same to them. It's always the guns that are to blame, not the troubled humans who pull their triggers.
And their simplistic solution to stop future mass shootings is always to call for new laws to ban military-style guns like the AR-15.
But whatever we do, we'll never stop every mass shooting. I've said before, as one of my father's Secret Service men once told me, "You can't defend against the crazies."
Alexis in Navy Yard, as well as Holmes in Aurora, Harris at Columbine, and many other mass shooters, were crazies. They each had serious mental problems.
Did they turn violent because they were naturally psychotic, or were they twisted by the side effects of the powerful anti-depressant drugs they were taking?
Could their rampages have been prevented by better medical care, better ways to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people, more armed guards in public places, or by ending the gun-free zones that attract young men bent on mass murder?
I don't know if any of these common-sense methods would prevent or reduce future mass shootings. The Idiots Against Guns in government and the mainstream media obviously don't know, either.
But they don't want to find out. For them it's always the gun that's to blame -- even when it doesn't exist.