Clutching for control

[Megan] Ezra Klein had a very good comment on the rush to push policy prescriptions:

The desire to segue instantly into an argument over gun control reflects, I think, the human ache to establish control -- however illusory -- over a tragic and senseless event. In the same way we're vaguely comforted by knowing that a horrific car accident was the result of an unbuckled seat belt and a lung cancer came from a lifetime of chain smoking, we want to be able to say that if we only change this law, tweak that policy, we can prevent this awful killing from ever being repeated. Sadly, I'm largely with Atrios on this: " if people want to kill people and don't care if they get killed or caught they're going to kill people." Thankfully, most humans are decent and very few are murderous, and so despite the countless firearms and cars and gasoline cans laying around this nation, mass killings remain blissfully rare.