In Ohio on Tuesday, former Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the Senate, called on Republican Senator Rob Portman to reverse his position on the watch list legislation from Ms Feinstein [Democratic Senator from California].

“The constant has been that these crimes are committed with guns—and that our leaders in Washington like Senator Portman are not taking simple, common sense steps to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would do us harm,” Mr Strickland wrote in a Medium post.

This is disingenuous on its face.  The constant is that these crimes were committed in gun-free zones, where both the victims and others present were completely unarmed and had no way to protect themselves—which the killers knew.

Strickland knows this full well, but in the words (without too much deviation from the original) of an earlier Obama advisor, Strickland will never let a tragedy go to waste.